April 14, 2025 | Sanjeev M Joshi.
After a gruelling day fighting the harbingers of doom & gloom, I’ve been known to skulk into a gallery for a hit of self-glorifying culture. I stride past those dramatic white walls, ignore the explanatory placards (who reads those?), and squint at the art like a detective at a crime scene—pretending, of course, to understand.
New needs need new techniques—or so they say. But let’s be real: slap some tiffin boxes together, call it a "meditation on migration," and—boom—million-dollar bids roll in. Glue bindi to a fibre glass cow? Suddenly, it’s a "searing critique of gender and tradition." Clever? Maybe. Absurd as a one-legged man in a bum-kicking contest? Absolutely. The real insult? Regional artists—the ones steeped in actual tradition—get ignored unless some curator drizzles them with "Contemporary" fairy dust.
Is there genius in the mess? Of course. When Indian art cuts through the bullshit, it’s raw, rebellious, and razor-sharp. But too often, it’s just a hustle dressed in art-school jargon. A Jackson Pollock splatter of brilliance and bullshit.
Will it ever find its soul? I’m an optimist—but must we wait till the cows come home to admit the emperor’s new clothes are just… a fur coat?
After ten impressionable years in the Konkan, I left for forty more in the UK studying, manufacturing, and picking up what life had to teach. When I returned, I found myself in a Real Estate Fund—an occupation as perplexing as a conjurer’s trick, leaving me uncertain whether to marvel or turn away.
But the land has a quiet insistence. Inspired by my parents' life on their farm, I have returned back to the Konkan—not as I left, but with earth on my hands and a sharper eye. Now, I busy myself with building a farm stay, and the patient work of growing things, all while keeping a watch on things that move the world.