Today, 31st October 2009, is the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Indira Ghandi in her residence in Delhi by two of her Sikh security guards.

On this day 1984: Indian prime minister shot dead (BBC)

Initial reports suggest the two attackers were guards at her home who were then shot by other security officers. No exact motive is known but it is believed the pair were Sikh extremists acting in retaliation for the storming of the Sikh holy shrine of the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June.

Indira Gandhi: The legacy (NDTV News)

She was India’s iron lady, her first woman prime minister, and one of her last mass leaders. Even 25 years after her death, Indira Gandhi is regarded by many as the country’s best prime minister. Her extensive agricultural and financial reforms are still relevant. Yet, she is equally remembered for bringing Indian democracy nearly to its feet with her high-handedness.

Sonia Gandhi: She was at her best when faced with challenges. If she was pushed to the wall, there was pressure on her, she would come out and really fight back.

Garden murder that sparked a Delhi pogrom by Ian Jack (The Guardian)

But Delhi was my first full-scale communal riot. Pogrom might be a better word. To belong to the 8% or so of the city’s population which was Sikh was to know terror during those days in late 1984; in terms of civilian bloodletting, India had seen nothing like it in almost 40 years. Not to be known as a Sikh, not to be bearded and turbaned, not to be carrying a ceremonial dagger, not to be wearing orthodox underpants; all these negatives made you safe.

Father didn’t kill Indira Gandhi to make Sikhs happy by Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa (Sify News)

Papaji and his colleague Satwant Singh had gone to Harmandar Sahib to pay obeisance after the Blue Star incident. On learning the exact motive of the attack, the way in which it was actually executed and on seeing the devastation of the place and plight of Sikhs, both of them decided to assassinate Indira Gandhi on their own.

25 years after Indira Gandhi’s assassination (Times of India)

Indians on Saturday flocked to Shakti Sthal to pay homage to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on her 25th death anniversary. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the slain leader’s daughter-in-law, were amongst the first to pay tribute at her memorial on the banks of the Yamuna river. An all-religion prayer was also organised on the occasion.

Assassination in India: A Leader of Will and Force by Linda Charlton (New York Times obituary 1984)

Strong-willed, autocratic and determined to govern an almost ungovernable nation that seemed always in strife, Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister four times and the dominant figure in India for almost two decades.

First find the berries. Fortunately for us about 25m down the road.

Wash and dry the berries. Remove any bugs or leaves.

Prick each fruit. The traditional way is to use a thorn from the Blackthorn bush but a pin will do.

Part fill the jars with berries. Any jars will do but we saved passata bottles and filled them about a third full of berries.

Add some sugar. We used about two table spoons of golden caster sugar. We’ll need to keep tasting and adding more sugar.

Pour in the vodka. Which was the cheapest 1 1/2 litres the supermarket had (but it was from Waitrose so it’s never going to be that rough)

Shake and leave. This is the hard part as they should be left for about three months turning to mix every few days.

Of course the more conventional use of sloes is in sloe gin… which we’ll be making next.

– words and photos by Paul.

Nine Lives by William Dalrymple reviewed by Ruaridh Nicoll (The Observer)

Yet at its best travel writing beats fiction, firing the imagination with tales of foreign peoples drawn close by our common humanity. If I had read Nine Lives as a boy, I would have felt that desire to strike out. That this book also makes its political points more powerfully than any newspaper article, while quietly adjusting a reader’s attitude to faith, builds its importance. It meets Dalrymple’s own criteria as set down in his recent article, displaying a deep knowledge of the culture, yet is intimate with each interviewee. This is travel writing at its best. I hope it sparks a revival.

William Dalrymple on the new generation of travel writers (The Guardian)

For nearly 10 years, travel writing was where the action was. It re-emerged at a time of disenchantment with the novel, and seemed to present a serious alternative to fiction. A writer could still use the techniques of the novel – it was possible to develop characters, select and tailor experience into a series of scenes and set pieces, arrange the action so as to give the narrative shape and momentum – yet what was being written about was true. Moreover, unlike most literary fiction, it sold.

Mahraja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts by William Dalrymple (The Guardian)

The V&A’s new exhibition is a serious attempt to put the myth of the maharajas in its proper context, as part of the history of courtly India, and to explore at the same time the visual and artistic expressions of Indian kingship both before and after the maharajas’ Victorian heyday. Nevertheless the show is haunted by the sad story of the princes and the British, telling how the British first bullied the princes into submission, schooling them in western tastes, then both laughed at, and envied, the monsters they had created. Finally, they quit India, leaving the maharajas to be abolished. At the V&A from 10th October 2009 – 17th January 2010

– Photos by Paul & Elizabeth

I can’t get any work done today because the swallows won’t leave me alone.

They keep calling, ‘come out to plaaaaaaaay’.

Elizabeth

There are more sheep and lambs than usual next door, and the lambs have decided that they want to play with us (or possibly that we might like to feed them) so there’s a hell of a racket every time we go outside.

Have a listen:

– Elizabeth

Everything in India is turned up to 11. To encompass the enormity of the country, the culture, the architecture, the food, the possibilities requires a particularly hefty guide book. A couple of years ago we decided that the only practical thing to do was to slice up our Lonely Planet guide and just carry the relevant sections, but we needed stationery supplies to keep the pages together and the used sections got rather dogeared in transit.

In just a few weeks we’re off on yet another trip to India, this time to Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab, and for this trip we’re better prepared. First we dissected both the Lonely Planet and the Footprint guide books, and then we reassembled them with blank pages for note-taking and a printout of our trip itinerary.

The bits we don’t need this time:

Having consulted the internet and learned how to stitch loose pages to make a book, we drilled holes in our proto-guide book and then stitched the whole thing together.

So far so straightforward, but it needed a cover. After a lot of measuring, a little cutting and some simple sewing, we had a fabric cover into which the book slips. The addition of a tie made with ribbon purchased at the tailor’s market in Madurai and a print from a discarded wood block purchased in Jaisalmer brightened things up and fitted it for its destination.

– words Elizabeth
– photos Paul

We have written about the excellent Rugby Art Gallery and Museum before but we want to bring to your attention the current exhibition which we highly recommend.

On until the 21st June 2009 the main gallery has a selection of works from the Rugby Collection which is described as:

Our annual exhibition, showcasing an exciting selection of works from the Rugby Collection. Established in 1946, Rugby’s British art collection includes work by L.S. Lowry, Paula Rego, Stanley Spencer and Bridget Riley as well as more recently acquired works by Paul Richards and Terry Atkinson.
This exhibition will also include works on loan from Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum including pieces by Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Sylvia Gosse, and Mary Kessel.

We don’t know who curated this exhibition but based on the works here they clearly have a similar view of art to us as there were very few paintings that didn’t produce strong reactions, and mostly positive ones. There is even a Lucian Freud pencil drawing that we liked!

Details of future exhibitions are listed below, taken from the 2009 exhibition leaflet.

out of the ordinary / extraordinary: Japanese contemporary photography
30 June – 26 August
This exhibition introduces the works of eleven Japanese artists, mostly from the younger generation. These artists, with their differing values and viewpoints, confront an increasingly complex world and attempt to come up with new forms of critical expression. With a delicate touch, they attempt to change the world – even if only slightly.

Lucy McLauchlan
8 September – 1 November
Armed with a paintbrush, Lucy spontaneously covers almost any surface with her unique style of mark making. The organic undertones and character driven, often densely populated images are made on surfaces that range from breasts to water towers, and from ceramics to cars, covering millimetres to metres.

– Words and pictures by Paul

We were asked to make the awards for the four categories in this year’s British Science Fiction Association Awards. Unsurprisingly we used photography!

Torque Control gives full details and discussion on the shortlists for this year’s Awards. The winners were announced at a ceremony held during the LX2009 Eastercon (an annual British science fiction convention). Details of the winners are given below with our artwork for the awards.

The Awards

BSFA Best Novel 2008

Awarded to: The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod

BSFA Best Short Fiction 2008

Awarded to: “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (Eclipse 2)

BSFA Best Non-Fiction 2008

Awarded to: Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn

BSFA Best Artwork 2008

Awarded to: Cover of Subterfuge ed. Ian Whates, by Andy Bigwood

Congratulations to all the winners!

– Words Paul
– Pictures Paul & Elizabeth

During a recent trip to a second-hand bookshop Elizabeth came away with a large pile of cheap issues of The National Geographic Magazine. It was a random selection from the 1950s and the intention was to use some of the pages in various art projects. Serendipity, however, has intervened as volume XCIX number five from May 1951 contains an article on a journey undertaken by Mrs Enakshi Bhavani, her movie-producer husband and their son across Northan India from Srinagar to Leh: an area we’ll be travelling around later this year.

Below are a selection of pages from the substantial article. The coloured plates were taken by Volkmar Wentzel, who worked as a photographer for the National Geographic for 48 years (his obituary from the Washington Post makes fascinating reading). The black and white photographs are not credited but from the text it is apparent that these were taken by Mrs Bhavani’s husband. My descriptions are adapted from Mrs Bhavani’s text.

Pages 606 and 607

These show a map of the journey, drawn by Irvine E. Alleman, and a photograph of the Lamayuru library which stacks sacred books like shoe boxes with the end tags bearing the titles. The volumes were hand printed in Lhasa from wood blocks carved by Tibetan monks.

Pages 632 and 633

The top picture is of Himis devil dancers wearing death’s-head hats and shields and the bottom one of the same dancers this time described as with “fiendish howls, masqueraders chase souls in purgatory”.

Pages 628 and 629

The plate on the left is of Pituk monastery in the Indus valley which at the time was the headquarters of the Yellow Hat or reformed lamas. The women at the base of the hill are winnowing barley. On the top right is a chorten (sepulchral monument) near Leh with each cavity containing the ashes and relics of holy lamas.

As we travel around the area in July, we’ll be curious to see how much these places have changed in the intervening 58 years.

– Words and pictures by Paul

A trip to Dudley took us to two very different Council run museums: the small and specialised Broadfield House Glass Museum and the Dudley Museum & Art Gallery, the main municipal one for the area.

Broadfield House Glass Museum

Let’s start with the one we liked

Now you know you are going to like somewhere that says it will open at noon then, at precisely noon, unlocks the gates to the grounds surrounding the grade II listed Regency town house. (It did, however, take a little longer for the main entrance to open due to a chat with a neighbour!) Inside, after a jolly and informed welcome from the staff, we found an extensive collection of British glass, spread over three floors, from the 17th Century to contemporary works, much of it from local manufacturers (all of which have now, sadly, closed). There are also two galleries with temporary exhibitions, one currently has a display of Czechoslovakian glass from the 1950s onwards and the other an astonishing exhibition by Diana Dias-Leao entitled The Danger of the Image: Glass Dresses.

Made from glass, porcelain, wire and silken yarns, the dresses are described by their creator as “fine-art objects or sculptures rather than clothes” although some have been modelled for photo shoots, and when asked about the kind of response she is after said:

“Two young girls once rushed towards my rose corset saying how great it would be for the disco, then recoiled when they got closer and saw it contained barbed wire and would cause serious pain if you were to put it on. That’s exactly the reaction I wanted.”

The collection does concentrate on the finished objects rather than their creation, and on the decorative rather than the practical although there is some historical context and some very strange objects. We found much of the older pieces fascinating for their extreme hideousness but many of the contemporary pieces were exquisite and beautiful, for example 2001: a human oddity? by David Reekie and the piece below which is an extract from Martian Square by Wendy Ramshaw.

Broadfield House is a lovely, small museum with a great atmosphere and an interesting collection; a visit is strongly recommended. There is one problem here: you need to visit soon as there is a real risk the museum will close as a cost-cutting measure with parts of the collection moved to the near-by Red House Glass Cone. The Council have launched a feasibility study:

“The council’s aspiration is to enhance our museums’ service, to create an excellent visitor experience that is appropriate to our renowned glass collections. A robust and professional study will seek to test the feasibility of relocating glass collections from Broadfield House and elsewhere to the Red House Glass Works Museum, known locally as the Red House Glass Cone. Currently Red House attracts in the region of 22,000 more visitors a year than visit Broadfield House therefore our aspiration is to capitalise on these visitor numbers to increase access to these wonderful collections to as many visitors as possible”

This all sounds very worrying, and we find bizarre the proposal to split up the collection rather than simply to encourage the visitors to the Red House to also visit Broadfield House. The Glass Association has more reasons why this proposed move would be wrong and has a link to an online petition. Better still, support the museum by visiting in person and sign the petition while you’re there.

As an extra incentive to visit, the museum has its own hot glass studio where you can watch Allister Malcom at work.

Dudley Museum & Art Gallery

It’s fortunate that we fortified ourselves with a pint of beer before hitting the second museum of the day, because really, Dudley Museum & Art Gallery is one of the tackiest museums we’ve visited in a long time.

It was immediately obvious that we were not the target audience: all the displays were clearly aimed at children in general and school parties in particular. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It pleases me to imagine children having an entertaining and engaging time whilst learning, but DMAG seems to have mostly forgotten the idea of learning and the entertainment factor is pretty random. We were entertained by the title of this photo:

(Pit bonk wenches had the job of going over the material that was brought up from the mine and picking out ironstone and coal.)

We were baffled by this photo of Dudley castle, in which we spotted a lurking robot:

We shook our heads at the practice of adding a plastic dinosaur to every display, regardless of relevance, and we despaired over the level of information provided. Here’s a representative display from the section on Ancient Greece:

No doubt DMAG is struggling with a lack of funding and probably a lack of interest too, but it’s depressing to see a municipal museum displaying an incoherent jumble of artefacts and providing very little opportunity for learning. Northampton Museum & Art Gallery also caters for the school party market with interactive displays and opportunity to dress up, but alongside that there is quality information well-presented. The tiny canal museum at Stoke Bruerne makes the most of a small and eclectic collection by providing as much information as possible. DMAG seems to aim no higher than being a momentary distraction on a rainy afternoon.

Further photographs from the day can be found here.

– Words by Paul and Elizabeth
– Pictures by Elizabeth and Paul