Tag Archives: autobiography

A photographer and his works exposed at a garden in Chennai

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SUNIL GUPTA IS a renowned photographer. He was born in 1953 in New Delhi, and migrated to Canada with his family in 1969. With a degree in accountancy and a diploma in photography, he moved to London (UK) in 1983. There, he married another photographer Charan Singh. Much of Sunil’s work relates to themes of sexual identity, migration, race, and family.

While we were in Chennai, the parents of another photographer, Varun Gupta, told us about the exhibition of Sunil Gupta’s works currently (January 2025) being held in the garden of the Government Museum in Chennai. The show is part of the Chennai Photographic Biennale, of which Varun is one of the founders.

The show is being held in the open air. We saw it when the air temperature was hovering around 29 degrees Celsius. In addition, crowds of schoolchildren were enjoying their packed lunches on the ground amongst the walls upon which the photographs were hanging. The show has been arranged to produce what could be termed an autobiography expressed by photographs.

There is no doubt that Sunil’s photographs are visually superb as well as being of great interest.

While I was looking at the images, many of which are artistic as well as informative, I began to wonder whether photography limits the expression of a photographer’s innermost feelings more than is the case for a creator who is painting or sculpting. The photographer, like other visual artists, can compose his/her pictures, regulate their appearance, and edit them. However, the light coming through the camera lens dictates the final product however many adjustments etc are made. In contrast, the light coming through the eyes of a sculptor or a painter (or a printmaker) impinges on the artist’s brain, and what eventually results reflects the effect that the image projected into the brain has on the creator’s innermost feelings about the subject matter.

Having said this, which I hope makes at least a little sense, I must admit that I do enjoy making photographic images and I hope that my photographic skills will be improved by viewing great works such as we saw at the exhibition of Sunil Gupta’s photographs in Chennai.

THY HAND, GREAT ANARCH BY NIRAD CHAUDHURI

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HAVING BEEN BEFRIENDED by the author’s son Prithvi, and having seen some of his father’s belongings stored in the Calcutta Club (in Kolkata), I finally got around to reading a book that I bought almost 30 years ago. The 960-page volume by Prithvi’s father, Nirad C Chaudhuri (1897-1999), is called “Thy Hand, Great Anarch”, and was first published in1987. The title comes from a couplet in a poem by Alexander Pope (1688-1744):

“Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;

And universal Darkness buries All.”

This pessimism well summarises what Chaudhuri has written in his enormous tome.

The book is the second part of Chaudhuri’s autobiography. It covers the period from 1921 to 1952 – the years leading up to the end of British rule in India and the first few years after the country gained its independence. Chaudhuri was a keen observer of what was going on in India during this period. Without pulling any punches, he gives his often-critical opinions of what was going on in the country, and never fails to point out what he felt was being done wrong both by the British and also by the Indians fighting for the end of British rule. Although he wrote this book long after 1952, he quotes from things he wrote during the period he described. He did this, I believe, to prove to the reader that his frequently idiosyncratic opinions were not as a result of looking back with hindsight, but were what he thought at the time.

One of Nirad’s chief criticisms of the various different freedom fighters was that they all expressed their dislike of British rule but, according to him, none of them proposed plans for how India was to be ruled if or when independence was achieved. I have read several books about the history of India’s fight for freedom, and most of them portray leaders such as Gandhi, Nehru, Vallabhai Patel, and Subhash Chandra Bose as heroic figures. This was not how Nirad portrayed any of them. Having been the personal secretary of Bose’s brother Sarat Bose, Nirad was in a good position to observe many political events at close hand. As for Gandhi, he wrote (giving his reasons):

“To take the question of his contribution to Indian independence first. It is a blatant falsehood to say that he or his movements brought it about, whatever their moral effect.”

This was not an opinion I had come across before in histories of the struggle for India’s independence. It is his highly individual and original views that help to make his book so engaging. He writes very scornfully of Subhash Chandra Bose’s politics and his cooperation with the British Empire’s enemies during WW2. As for Jinnah – the ‘father’ of Pakistan – he showed less disdain, writing:

“I must set down at this point that Jinnah is the only man who came out with success and honour from the ignoble end of the British Empire in India.”

Unlike members of the Indian National Congress and their opponents – the British Government, Jinnah:

“… never made a secret of what he wanted, never prevaricated, never compromised, and yet succeeded in inflicting an unmitigated defeat on both the British Government and the Indian National Congress.”

Although I got the feeling that Chaudhuri admired the British and believed that Indians would fare better by being part of the British Empire than they would in an India ruled by Indians, his book is by no means short of criticism of the British as colonists, during the last years of empire, and after India became independent. Figures such as Attlee and Mountbatten get little or no praise from Nirad. At the beginning of a chapter called “Mount Batten Piled on Mount Attlee”, he wrote:

“As if Attlee single-handed was not enough to complete the work of demolition begun by the more cunning mediocrity. Baldwin, he piled on himself Lord Mountbatten to add greater work to his policy, which brought endless misfortunes to the Indian people.”

As the book’s title suggests, the text contains Nirad’s views on the anarchy he perceived developing as India approached independence, and then after having achieved it. It is not surprising, given what he wrote and thought about the country of his birth that Nirad chose to move to England (in about 1982) and lived there until he died. Many readers might be surprised or even horrified by what the author wrote, but he takes care to make whatever he thought sound reasonable to his readers. There are parts of the book which I found hard going – difficult to comprehend, but I ploughed on regardless, and was pleased that I did.

Black abolitionists in Westminster

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WESTMINSTER ABBEY IS costly for tourists to enter. Currently (November 2021) the entrance ticket ranges in price from £10 for a child to £24 for a full-price adult ticket. Without doubt, the Abbey is well worth a visit, but if you do not feel like spending so much money, its neighbour, the St Margaret’s Church is also full of interest but charges no entry fee.

Because the present Abbey was once the church attached to a monastery, St Margaret’s was built in the 11th and 12th centuries to provide a place of worship for the (non-ecclesiastical) residents of Westminster. When the residential population of the area declined, it became what it is now, the parish church for The House of Commons. The first church on the site was built in the Romanesque style, but when this deteriorated in the 14th century, it was replaced by the present structure built in the Perpendicular (gothic) style. Since then, like many old churches it has undergone various modifications over the centuries.

Amongst the many fascinating things within the church, which are described in an excellent booklet by Tony Willoughby and James Wilkinson, several things particularly attracted my attention. First of all, several of the windows in the south wall of the church contain superb modern stained glass designed by the painter John Piper (1903-1992) and created by Patrick Reyntiens (1925-2021). The were installed in 1966 to replace Victorian windows that were destroyed during WW2. Piper’s windows alone are a good reason to visit the church.

Another thing that caught my eye is a pair of doors on the north side of the church. These are covered with red leather, each one embossed in gold with a portcullis, surmounted by a crown, the symbol of Parliament. Some of the prayer kneelers are also decorated with this symbol.

Amongst the many tombs and funerary memorials within the church, there is one to the artist Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677). Born in Prague, he left the city when the Emperor Ferdinand the Second ordered Bohemian nobility to convert to Roman Catholicism or leave the country. A highly prolific and much-admired artist, creator of many works including detailed views of London, he died a poor man in Westminster. His monument is on the north wall.

Amongst the many memorials on the south wall there is an oval plaque commemorating the fact that in 1759, Olaudo Equiano (aka Gustavus Vassa) was baptised in the church when he was a slave owned by a sea captain, Michael Henry Pascal. Equiano (c1745-1797) was a black African slave, who gained (purchased) his freedom in 1766. After numerous adventures, which he related in his autobiographical work “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”, published in 1789 in London, he became active in the nascent movement to abolish the slave trade. In addition to his book, he wrote a great number of pamphlets and letters to the press.

Whereas I was able to spot the plaque for Equiano with no difficulty, I was unable to see the grave of another abolitionist, also a former slave, Ignatius Sancho (c1729-1780), who was born on a slave ship and is buried in the churchyard of St Margaret. He married a West Indian woman, Anne Osborne, in St Margaret’s, ran a grocery shop in Westminster, acted, composed music, and wrote against slavery using the pseudonym “Africanus”. He was the first black Briton to vote in a parliamentary election. He cast his vote both in 1774 and 1780.

In addition to these two black abolitionists, the church contains memorials to two men who tried to alleviate the suffering of slaves in the Americas, Richard Burn (c1744-1822) and Thomas Southerne (1660-1746). The latter was one of the first writers in English to denounce slavery.

I hope that what I have written above will help to distract you from the idea of visiting only Westminster Abbey and to encourage you to make plenty of time to explore St Margaret’s.  

May the 8th

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SIXTY-NINE YEARS ago on the 8th of May 1952, a lecturer in economics at the London School of Economics was sitting anxiously in the ante-chamber of an operating theatre in the Royal Free Hospital, which was at that time in London’s Grays Inn Road. It is now part of the Eastman Dental Hospital, the post-graduate dental school of University College London, where I have attended courses.

The lecturer looked up from what he was trying to read to distract himself when the gloved surgeon came out of the operating theatre, and talking to himself, but loud enough to be heard, said:

“Shall I use the Simpsons or the Kiellands?”

He was referring to forceps used to deliver babies. My father, who thought that the question had been addressed to him, replied:

“I am sorry I can’t help you with that. I am only an economist.”

The surgeon gave him a withering look, and returned to the operating theatre, where the economist’s wife was lying, deeply anaesthetised. In the end, the surgeon decided to deliver the baby with a Caesarian section.

That baby was me. The economist was my father. That I am writing this today is at the very least a minor miracle, as I will explain.

Back in the early 1950s, one did not argue with medical practitioners; they always knew best. My mother had informed her physician when I had been conceived, but he did not believe what she had said. I can imagine the doctor thinking: “what would she know? Only a woman.” So, when my mother did not give birth when she expected, at about nine months after conception, the doctor told her to be patient as he thought she had another month to go

After I had been ‘in utero’ for ten months, my mother began getting worryingly ill. Eventually, those who claimed to know best admitted her to hospital and I was delivered. Both my mother and me had developed symptoms of toxaemia. It was touch and go as to whether we would both survive, but we did.

Because I had been inside the womb for a month longer than I should have, I was born with several problems. One of these was a cerebral haematoma, which I hope has resolved itself by now. Years later, my mother told the school that I should not play rugby for fear of disturbing this. The other thing was that my neck was bent over to one side; I had a torticollis. The medics told my mother that it was incurable and that she should get used to the idea that I would just have to live with the distortion.

If I am not misrepresenting my late mother, I am certain that she would not have been happy living with a distorted child. She was a sculptor and decided that the doctors were wrong about being certain that my neck condition was incurable. Every day, she stretched my neck gently and gradually it began to grow in the normal way. I am incredibly grateful that she did this.

Getting back to my first days on earth, I had to spend the first fortnight in an incubator. In those far-off days, visiting babies in incubators was limited if it was allowed at all. My mother was exhausted after the traumatic birth and, given that she would not have been able to see me much whilst I was in the incubator, she and my father took a holiday in Cornwall. I only learnt about this a few years ago, Had I known about it when I was younger, who knows but I might have had a rejection complex. My behaviour might be considered unusual at times, but I feel it would be unfair to blame that on my spell in the incubator in London while my parents relaxed in Cornwall.

Well, there you have it: the story of the first few days of my life. Of course, I cannot remember any of it, but what I have told you was related to me by people who were around at the time.