SHAKTI STORIES

Ketna Patel:  Yeah, so I… I don't know where I had this inner knowing that I need to explore why I’ve not become another bag on a conveyor belt, you know, who just kind of does the usual things.  And I even thought if I ever end up with one of these nice guys, I’m going to have a semi-detached house, and a maroon or burgundy Mercedes, and my kids will go to private school. I could just see my whole life in front of me, you know.  So that I think induced a sense of panic, and I remember one evening after a row with my grandmother, I called up my university tutor David, a good friend now, and I said, David whatever you’re working on, whatever project you’re working on right now, as long as it’s outside of the UK, can you just get me a job there.  You know, even a junior job. I’ll work for very little, but just get me out of here. And he happened to be designing The Esplanade, at that time.

 

Interviewer:  Wow!

 

Ketna Patel:  And I didn’t even know where Singapore was on the map.  You know, it was not a part of my life. But I was just so keen to leave this arranged marriage situation.

 

Interviewer:  Yeah, yeah. Was she beginning to put pressure on you to get married?

 

Ketna Patel:  Yeah she was. And there was a side story to that.  Because one of the things I did was, I thought before I come to any conclusion let me check out what the Indian male scene is like.  So I did this social experiment where I decided to date 10 Indian Gujarati men…

 

Interviewer:  Oh God!

 

Ketna Patel:  …through these channels.

 

Interviewer:  Why would you do that?

 

Ketna Patel:  Because I wanted to.  Because it’s a perfect opportunity (right?) for me to kind of just get in to that narrative, to understand.  Because I think, somewhere in me, I’m quite intuitive. If you meet a person, you can almost see where you might be in 20 years’ time if you look at that person.

 

Interviewer:  Yeah, yeah.

 

Ketna Patel:  So I had these 10 back-to-back dates with these really sweet guys.  Actually to my surprise, I couldn’t find fault in them. They were nice, they made me laugh, they paid for the bill, they were acting like perfect gentlemen.  But the fact that they were too nice, was a bit scary for me. Because I wasn’t going to grow…

 

Interviewer:  Were they proper?

 

Ketna Patel:  Yeah, they were too… they were just nice boys, you know.  They don’t think outside of the box. They wouldn’t have taken major risks.  They’re all dentists, doctors, lawyers, accountants. And I don’t know, somewhere in me I have this wild spirit, I don’t know where it comes from.  But at that age, didn’t know how to articulate it. I just knew that I had to explore life. So I did these 10 dates, and I’m really glad I did them.  Because that made me want to leave. So when I did leave, I left – like I fled. Because my grandmother is very dominating and she’ll make you feel guilty, you know, that my dad’s not earning a lot of money – he’s paying for my education and you are just rakhdva-fying – you know that’s a Gujarati word.

 

Interviewer:  What’s that?

 

Ketna Patel:  Like you are just gallivanting all over town, and you are not a proper Indian girl, and look at the way you dress, and you know, nag, nag, nag…

 

Interviewer:  Like regular grandmother stuff!

 

Ketna Patel:  Yeah. Except I never lived away at university, you know.  So, all my other girlfriends are having boyfriends, having a good time, and I’m here stuck with my grandmother making chapatis on a Saturday evening, you know.

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Interviewer:  And how does art help you explore the concept of gender in India?

 

Ketna Patel:  In India?

 

Interviewer:  Yeah, I mean, could you tell me a bit of your story of how you sort of left Singapore and then you got into doing art [inaudible 6:42]

 

Ketna Patel:  Yeah, well, I guess what I realized after I’d done a few of these corporate projects and I didn’t have to worry about money so much, what used to intrigue me was a multiculturalism that was present in Singapore – the Malay, Indian, Chinese – expat thing.  And I realized that there was a lot of subconscious racism going on. There was a lot of tension between the different groups. And because I had been Indian living in Africa and also an Indian living in Britain, I was very used to being the outsider, and I knew that it was very important to try and create bridges between the different communities for them to get on better.  So I designed an art collection called “Asia Pop” where I wanted Asians to take ownership over their identity and stop being so apologetic for it, because I found that the average Asian was still quite insecure about his or her identity and they were trying too hard to be “western” – whatever that meant. So I wanted to come up with something that would be fun and glamorous and modern and sleek, but it would be Asian.  So deliberately mixed up the Indians and the Chinese and the Malays, and I came up with these collection called “Asia Pop” and if you look at a lot of compositions, I have actually mixed things up.

 

Interviewer:  Right, right.

 

Ketna Patel:  So that’s where I started paying homage to the Indian identity in context to the Asian identity.  And then, as I got deeper and deeper into that, I started getting asked to do separate identities like India Pop, Africa Pop, Cuba Pop, Singapore Pop.  So it all came under a larger collection called “Planet Pop”.

 

Interviewer:  Oh! Okay.

 

Ketna Patel:  And the “Pop” stands for popular culture.  And the popular culture means the culture of everyday people.  So, I started traveling to India a lot, because I’m an Indian, it was close to Singapore and I was fascinated by India.  And then once I was there, I just fell in love. I just completely fell in love and it became an obsession. And then of course when you travel a lot through India and you document India through photographs and films, you come back and you convert all those documentations into work.  And because I had access to the country, because of language, it was easier for me to do this. It was natural. And I used art as a way to get to know myself as well, because I hadn’t explored the Indian in me, so the art projects would take to these villages and to places where I would never have gone on my own.  And through these experiences, and usually I was commissioned to go somewhere, some gallery or somebody would say, “Can you do a whole series on Hyderabad?”, for example. So I would pack my bags, go to Hyderabad, read up about it, go and visit all the places, find out about the history, and come up with art works to incorporate all that.  And that was the way for me to travel in own country. I was getting paid for it, and I had a deadline, and I was more focused.

 

Interviewer:  So could you tell me a bit more about your art projects in villages in India?

 

Ketna Patel:  You know, the more I got to know India, I realized that we were in quite a large… it was problematic situation because India is trying to leapfrog from the industrial age in to the digital age without having gone through all the different ideological steps that maybe the West went through, like women's emancipation and equality of all the different castes, and all that.  So, while observing and studying all this I realized that the biggest divide in India came from the rural and the urban, because 70% to 75% of India still lives in villages. And at the moment there are 30 people that leave villages every minute to move to a city in India, that's an official government statistics.

 

Interviewer:  Oh my goodness!

 

Ketna Patel:  Thirty people!  So the fact that I have a studio in Pune, which is one of the fastest growing cities in India, I can see how cities in India are increasingly unable to cope with the strain of this migration from the rural areas.  They don't have the facilities to house these people. We don't have enough places where these individuals are being integrated into society, etc. All sorts of problems are happening. And at the same time, villages are being hollowed out and we’re losing a lot of the knowledge that is inherent in villages, you know, that that has been passed from generation to generation.  You’re just losing it in one go, ’cause once you sever that oral tradition, you’ve lost it.

 

Interviewer:  Right.

 

Ketna Patel:  So that made me really, really focus on that particular subject.  Because there’s so much work that needs to be done on it.

 

Interviewer:  So, could you tell me a bit about how the concept of gender in villages is different from the concept of gender in urban settings in India?

 

Ketna Patel:  Well, it’s similar and yet it’s different.  Villages have to be very practical because they’re very vulnerable.  A lot of them are agriculture based, and you know you have to work according to the weather patterns and the seasons.  You know, like when it’s harvest time you stay up all night and you have to harvest, because if it rains the crop would be ruined, etc.  So there’s a lot more co-operation in villages. Like when it's time for harvesting, everybody, whether you are a grandmother, an uncle, a child, a teenager – everybody gets involved and you stay up all night, you sing songs, you do a harvest.  So what I realized was that there were very healthy eco structures. There were self-sustaining support systems, where even if you became a widow, there would be a whole system that’ll look after you because there’s so much familiarity. You had grown up with the people around you.  So they’re not going to let you just disintegrate. And you didn’t have these type of support systems in cities. Cities are more anonymous in structure. So the women that thrive in cities are usually the middle class women who come from educated backgrounds because they have financial security.  The ones that are vulnerable are the ones that come from villages and they don’t have the support systems, and yet they are part of the mainstream narrative. Because we have not gone out and listened their stories formally. So we just come up with clichés, like “o, bechari, bechari, the poor, she’s got no food, let’s give her food” you know.  We need to look deeper at the problems. The problems of migration, the problems of identity.  So going back to your original question, I would say that I found women in villages a lot stronger.  They might not have been literate or educated, but there was a quiet wisdom to them which came from years of teamwork, the ability to compromise with people, the ability to empathize with people.  I think these are very important skills. The ability to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes, and then see reality from their point of view. So, they weren’t so selfish. City people as a rule have become more selfish because it’s difficult to live in a city and you have to look after yourself.  So in an odd way, there is such an active paradox. Village women are at once traditional and very modern, but not necessarily in a physical way. I mean they wouldn't be wearing jeans and T-shirts, but their minds are very nimble, which means that they have the ability to chop and change their thoughts because they have to be so spontaneous.  Again, it comes a lot from weather. You know, like suddenly you’re sleeping and it starts raining and all your rice is going to get ruined, you’ve to like – get out there and go! You know, you just have to adapt. And city women might be strong in that they’re aggressive because they have to protect themselves, but maybe they are not so adaptable.  Right? So, it’s not a black and white question, there are many shades of grey to this question.

 

Interviewer:  So what is the single biggest advantage you think a woman could have in India, whether it be rural India or urban India?  Or, are the advantages different for the 2 different scenarios?

 

Ketna Patel:  No, they are quite similar in that we live in a capitalistic world right now.  That seeps in the context of globalization. So I think without a shadow of doubt, the most important thing would be financial independence.  Once the woman is financially independent, she wouldn't feel insecure, and if she doesn't feel insecure then she won't manipulate her relationship with others around her in order to get some sort of security.  You know, she will be okay. Worst comes to worst, even if she is abandoned, she can afford to have somebody look after her. So financial independence is paramount. Now usually financial independence comes either because you inherit wealth or because you educate.  You are educated and you work for it. So I think even today, there are a lot of laws in the traditional aspect of the society where only the boys inherit the wealth from the parents, not the girls, ’cause the girls once they get married and they leave, they’re not considered part of the original source family.  So, there needs to be a real thought revolution and we need to change our legal structures, we need to encourage equality and we need to do whatever it takes to encourage education. The education in India is not very good in my opinion. It needs a lot of work, it’s out of date. There is a lot of rote learning where you’re not taught how to think independently, just have to kind of memorize things, and cheat in a way, just to get a qualification.  So, you know, there’s work to be done at all different sectors, but I would say financial independence is important.

 

Interviewer:  Right. So you had briefly mentioned women manipulating relationships to sort of have their own insurance policies in case something happens when they’re not financially independent.  Could you tell me a bit more about that?

 

Ketna Patel:  Yeah, when the women is not financially independent, especially if she comes from a traditional background, there’s always a threat that her husband will leave her, or the husband dies, or they’re in a joint family and she gets bullied around.  So, because this has been happening over ages, I think it’s almost become commonplace now that a woman, a mother, who perhaps does not receive the respect and love from her husband is very shriveled emotionally. She’s starved of love and she just doesn't get it, so she is in a lot of pain.  So she converts that pain into an exaggerated maternal expression which is almost suffocating to her children, especially the boy children, where she becomes like a slave for them, you know. She can’t do enough for them. But in doing that, she, and when I say “she”, we’re talking about half a billion women, so it’s a collective energy that needs attention.  She is preventing the boy from becoming an independent man because all his needs are looked after – she is waiting up for him even if he comes home really late, she is there to make him fresh chapattis at, I don’t know, midnight if necessary, so he always has garam garam khana.  He doesn’t have to do the washing up, he never has to do the laundry, she will sing to him.  I mean I’m exaggerating, but you get the point.

 

Interviewer:  No, I do.

 

Ketna Patel:  That he’s never had to do things on his own! So what that has done over the ages, has created a very artificial inflated male Indian ego which I do not find in other cultures.  It’s something very unique about the male Indian when he, no matter how educated he is, he actually thinks he is better.

 

Interviewer:  In what sense?

 

Ketna Patel:  Well, he thinks he is more deserving or that he is better.  You know, it’s a bit like your body. If you have a car accident tomorrow and you can’t use your legs for let’s say a year, your muscles are going to go weak.  Right?

 

Interviewer:  Uh-huh. Yeah.

 

Ketna Patel:  So, if you do not use your muscles of empathy or teamwork or housework or all these things…

 

Interviewer:  Or doing things for other people.

 

Ketna Patel:  Doing things for other people which requires empathy and sensitivity and compassion, after a while the muscle goes dead.  So now you’ve created an entire society where the man is incapable of using that empathetic muscle, and we don’t know how to even articulate this, because it’s not a physical thing.  It’s a mental or emotional thing which then percolates down to all the different layers of society and creates immense damage because you see Indian society laced with chauvinism at all levels.  When you go in to police station, then the guy would be staring at your breasts, or you know, you would get wolf-whistled if you go out, or if you’re wearing clothes too tight, you get called a ‘whore.’

 

Interviewer:  By both men and women.

 

Ketna Patel:  Yeah. So there’s judgement.  It’s confusing for women in the 21st century because on one hand we’re being exposed to democracy and independence and education, and a lot of us travel in the West where you want to live as a free woman.  But at the same time you live in a very traditional society. So you have this schizophrenic relationship. When you have to keep one foot in both arena, then it’s a bit confusing. So, it’s the men that need to be worked upon.  I think they all need to be operated upon and part of their, like a sensitivity chip missing in most Indian men. And so I think they all need to be on an operating table and somehow be microchipped with this particular chip.

 

Interviewer:  So, is it that we need to be raising our children differently?

 

Ketna Patel:  Oh, absolutely.  But in order for that to happen, you know, you need to have all sorts of social and educational programs, you need to have this in your popular culture, in your Bollywood movies.  You know, these references need to be everywhere in overt and less overt ways. But yes, we need to be raising our children differently, absolutely.

 

Interviewer:  So you have an artwork that goes “I am a goddess and you are a loser.  Any questions?” So can you explain that artwork to me?

 

Ketna Patel:  A few years ago, I was staying in the desert of Kutch in Gujarat.  And there were a group of construction workers where were working on the village, and they were beautiful ’cause they were wearing all that Kutchi clothes, with their ornaments and everything.  They actually go to sleep with that. So, anyway, I was chatting to them and one of these girls refused to… she just gave me the cold shoulder. She was very rude to me and she didn’t talk to me, because I had a white husband.  So she thought I was some sort of traitor and I wasn’t a real Indian. And then on the third or fourth day, I started speaking in Gujarati to her, and then she realized that I was not as bad as she thought I was, and we became a bit friendlier.  But what I liked about her was that even though she was illiterate and she was very young, she must have been about 17, she had enough confidence to snub me. She didn’t try and be polite or whatever. She made some judgement about me and she was rude.  I mean, it takes confidence to be rude to somebody. So I liked her attitude. Then I got to know her really well, and right at the end we were hugging. I stayed there for almost a week, and I when I came back to Singapore, I wanted to create an artwork that would demonstrate her vivaciousness and her attitude – that she was somebody who’s not going to take nonsense from anybody.  And I was just hoping and praying that when this girl got married, she wouldn’t just turn into a doormat.

 

Interviewer:  Oh, yeah.

 

Ketna Patel:  You know, because that usually happens if you have an aggressive mother-in-law, or a husband is not very nice, or whatever.  You know, slowly that fire, that vitality that’s in your eyes, it gets doused. And she was so vivacious and very beautiful. So I honored her.  And in that painting, she’s carrying “gobar” on her head, which is cow dung.  And when she was joking with me, she would always say, “hey if you don’t behave, I’m going to throw this cow dung on you,” so she was very mischievous.  So I wanted to create something that’s mischievous, confident, and paid homage to this young girl that I’d met.

 

Interviewer:  So would you say that your art is inspired by everyday people, that’s individuals, instead of trying to depict the society as a whole?

 

Ketna Patel:  Well, the two are the same.  The society is made up of individuals.  But yes I do like to tell stories about individuals because they become ambassadors or representatives of a bigger story.  It’s a bit like, when you watch any good movie, the movie could be about Second World War, there’ll usually be 1 or 2 or 3 central characters and you use their life story as a hook to enter the larger story of Second World War.  So in that way, if I want to say something about Society, I use the individual as a hook to enter a larger narrative. Because otherwise it becomes too impersonal and there’s no hook.