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From Poha to Public Art
Artist Shreyas Karle shares the inspiring factors and the working process of his work called ‘O poha khanewale bhaisab jara padhiye…’. This work was done during the Sandarbh Residency’2007 at Partapur.
‘O poha khanewale bhaisab jara padhiye’… (Partapur ke pohe).
‘Hello gentleman having breakfast...Please read’ (rice breakfast of Partapur)
Rice flakes are prepared from paddy. It is popularly known a poha. It is a fast moving consumer item and generally eaten as a breakfast. It can be fried with spices and chilly to make hot and tasty food item or milk or curd is mixed with it and then eaten. It is also used in large quantities for making chevda (a farsan item) and many caterers use it for thickness of gravy. Since it is made from paddy, it is easily digestible. Most of its preparation can be made at a short notice and hence bulks of the house hold store it on regular basis. With proper storage its shelf life is 2-3 months. This is a common product produced anywhere in the country. Rice flakes or poha is an important breakfast in semi –urban and rural areas and middle class families of urban India. (Source-internet database.)
“Aaiye bhai Aaiye bhai Aaiye bhai aaiye aaiye aaiye....malai.” (Come and have pohas as good as the fresh butter) - shouts Bharat bhai, a local poha seller to attract his customers.
One can often hear this luring line from him- he is one of the local poha vendors in partapur (Rajasthan). I was in Rajasthan for a one month residency program. The place Partapur which was a centre of my residency is a part of the Banswara district which is a part of fertile Rajasthan known as Vagad. It is a fertile zone with agriculture becoming the major occupation resource for its inhabitants. It’s also a rich tribal belt, with almost 70% of the people belonging to various tribal communities.
Partapur is known for its poha and Darzi Samaj (the tailor society). I became more interested in the poha sellers compared to the latter. One will find around 40-50 poha sellers in the small town. Poha is a staple diet for the people in Partapur. None other breakfast item sells as largely as poha. Not only a breakfast, but is also consumed throughout the day as a part of lunch or early dinner. It was not only eaten by the people staying in that village, but also by people who passed Partapur on their way to another destination. Within a day or two of my stay there, it became a part of even my regular diet.
The 2 main reasons why many people ate poha were-
(a) It was readily available at every joint and at a very cheap rate. (Rs. 3/- or Rs. 4/- a plate).
(b) It was easy to digest, and could satisfy one’s appetite at any time of the day.
For me “hunger” was a good enough reason to consume it at least 7-8 times in a day. The whole idea of actually working with the poha sellers germinated from the time I spent at their joints.
I was researching on the stories related to the names of different villages as well as also trying to re-map the history of those villages. I made a general survey of the poha sellers; and choose the four well-known poha-sellers who had a popular demand to the poha breakfast they made.
The four poha sellers were;
Bharat bhai pohewala
Char thammba pohewala (ratlami nastha)
Danpur pohewalla.
Bus stand ke pohe wala (shiv restaurant)
The poha is served on a piece of paper, (either from a daily newspaper or a magazine paper) hence the project was to supply photocopies of the original papers which had different text and drawing on them made by me. This idea basically struck me when I was having my poha on a piece of magazine paper and as I was finishing my poha, the image of a Hollywood actress revealed in front of me. This thing led me to supply the poha eaters with some food for thought.
The work was to happen in two phases: the first phase would have the twelve sun signs (for men) with a drawing resembling each sun sign.
The second phase was to distribute papers with stories of the village names collected from different villages printed and Photocopied.
Each paper had a title punch line, “o pohe khanewale bhaisabh jara padhiye”, (hello gentleman, having your paddy flakes, please read) and a base line saying, “please throw your paper waste in to the dustbin after reading”. The base line was actually written as to mock on the daily practise of the local people of littering around in the town. The entire process of the poha seller giving his poha’s on the paper was to be video graphed in such a manner that the person eating poha won’t be aware about it.
As planned I recorded the whole process of this act, where the poha was served on the Photocopied papers and was really amused by the different reactions of the poha eaters. Almost 90% of the poha consumers though literate didn’t pay heed to the paper they were eating on, it seemed as their agenda was only to devour the food. Some people reacted to the whole work when they read the paper, while some people reacted because they found out that they were been video recorded. Hence I also got reactions from illiterate people acting to read because they were in front of the camera. In the first phase of the work, where I had distributed the sun signs, individuals didn’t always get their sun sign, so after reading the one they got, and they used to ask for their own sun sign. I had strictly told the poha sellers to ask them to take another plate of poha if they want their own sign. To my surprise people actually took poha to read their sun sign. Some of them read it and took it back with them; some just wanted the papers without the poha. But almost all the people didn’t really throw the paper in the basket, still throwing it on the ground.
The first phase of the work became very popular in the town, that’s when I decided to attempt my second phase of supplying stories to the poha eaters. These stories belonged to the nearby villages, which spoke about the history of the name of the village, it also had the information about the tribe living in that particular village, their occupation and where they descended from. These stories (as I have mentioned earlier) were a part of my research related to the names of the villages, here I used them to promote my campaign of “aapki kahani aapki zubani-banswada ki kahaniya”- (tell your village story yourself, the stories of Banswada).
The stories were printed on a stamp paper imitation, which gave them a level of authenticity, as well as they were stamped in red, which read the topic of the campaign. The page also had my contact number, if anyone of the reader was interested in sharing the story of his village. This again was distributed in the same manner as the earlier work and also was video graphed without the knowledge of the viewer. Though I didn’t get any call till my month’s stay in Partapur, but whoever met me wanted to tell the story he knew, about his village. The whole process was a hit in the small town and the work Photocopy became very popular amongst the people there.
This project mainly was done to explore and break into the routine life of a common village person-maybe a labourer, a farmer, a businessman or a person belonging to any profession. Poha- because of its popularity became my only link to communicate my idea with larger mass. The work also gave an element of surprise to the people who are habituated to a routine. It also to some extent made the viewer think of why was the need of the artist to intervene in his space.
It had under layers of establishing certain disciplines in the society- Making the masses aware of the filth problem they are facing and making them conscious of their civic duties. Also trying to make them understand the importance of the place they dwell in, by bringing up the historical importance of their place. It was also good to know that how an age old method of campaigning was still effective in today’s high-speed age.
I also interviewed the four poha seller’s worked with and came across a few interesting facts about them and their business.They were initially engaged into different occupations before becoming the poha seller’s.
Shiv restaurant owner worked on the petrol pump and left the job ten years ago to open a poha joint. His shop is near the old bus stand, so he has a large number of customers which are outside Partapur. They eat at his joint as the local bus drops them there. He makes around 5-7 kgs of poha everyday and sells an average of 500 plates a day, each costing around Rs 3 to 4. Shiv restaurant caters to the larger travelling mass of people so makes poha in a way it’s generally eaten, adding onion and sev (gram flour fried into noodle shape) to it. He is happy with his poha business and is planning to send his son abroad for better job opportunities.
Bharatbai ke pohe was my all time favourite and also his style of selling the poha’s was a hit in the small town. “I make poha in just four minutes”, and that’s what he does.
He only sells poha in the evening for 2-3 hours and is popular among many people inside and outside Partapur.
The charthammba poha joint is run by a photographer. One will find Ramesh bhai frying samosas (an Indian food item with layering of gram flour stuffed with boiled potato vegetable) at his joint with a smile of satisfaction on his face. On interviewed he was reluctant to talk about his earlier profession, but later declared that he had a photo studio which he sold as photography was not yielding him any money. He says, “People don’t click photographs every day, but they do eat poha every day, so why not sell poha”. With this very thought he started selling poha and is quite happy with his decision. He seldom does pursue his earlier profession if he gets a good deal for it. Ramesh bhai brings his poha prepared at his home. Most of his consumers are the working class people in the town.
This project was carried out in the month of December 2007 for the period of six days. The video version of few parts of the process was recorded in the manner of the CCTV recording system.
With the work statement I am attaching the copies of Photocopied papers which were distributed to the poha vendors, and also some stills taken during the process of the work. The information on the photocopy was printed in Hindi as the whole work was executed in an area of Hindi speaking population.
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