The Story inside my head

In my head, i always start with a story. I always manage to carve out a space for myself in any work i do, so as to not loose myself and my identity which i wish to communicate with the work. People keep complaining about how difficult it is to be yourself in commercial works, but i have always found it easy to mould myself in the given box and then slowly pushing myself forward to break it. Luckily it gets accepted as fluidly and organically  like the process i indulge in for any creative project.

I am juggling many projects professionally and personally recently, constantly stimulating me to push my boundaries and explore what i can do with my ability to understand and execute aesthetics. My aesthetics has always rooted from 'nostalgia'..i have this innate urge to make everything i do look and feel used, lived in and narrative.

This particular series was photographed for 'Anupamaa'. Her gulabi collection is as bright and lively it can get. Like the flowers in springtime. As usual we started with a story and took the shoot forward with a narration. The story of 'Gulabi', A woman who waits for the night to bloom as she wears every treasure she owns and roams around in the Haveli in anticipation.

The idea eventually became more romantic as we moved forward, the wait became for a lover.  We wanted to capture the process of a woman who is getting ready for her lover and capture that anticipation and nervous energy while she goes through time.

Affcourse the story of Gulabi and her haunting inside the Haveli remained in my head. I revisited the shoot and tried to bring in the feeling i got when i first visited the haveli before the shoot. The haveli is situated in Munirka Village. It is owned by one of the Jat landlord of the area. For some reason no one lives there anymore. The remains were numerous medals and photographs of a man who must have been a swimming champion at some time. His photographs were everywhere one of them alongside Amitabh Bacchan. The old blazer hung on the brick wall with a very dusty cloth on it for protection. The chaarpais were as casually unkept as if the man decided to just leave the space one day while he was doing a mundane chore,never to return. The haveli looked like someone just left it and never looked back, never looked back to come collect the pictures, never looked back to shift some of the furniture's and never revisited to revisit memories.

As if a lover left and never looked back to what happened to 'Gulabi' and she was left iternally waiting in anticipation.

 

Self potraits.

This is how they took selfys and they did it better than us.:)
The smile less face, the dressed hair and the flawless skin.

 

Lights, Camera, Studio .

LIGHTS, CAMERA, STUDIO

I personally love the charm of getting a picture clicked in a studio, i love that my parents loved to dress up especially for this. For them going to a studio and getting a picture clicked was an occasion, An occasion to be glamorous, an occasion to self indulge and an occasion to express.

My mother and her numerous self portraits in the early 1960’s tell so much about the changing fashion, both internationally and in India. The hairstyles, the clothes, everything spoke so much about her way of keeping up with the rest of the world.

 

Playing Dress Up

Ma and my Aunt (Soni Yaoye). They were best friends and they still are! :)

I particularly love these pictures...the playfulness and the letting go!

 

My aunts (Mother's sisters) and Ma.

Playing Dress Up

The first game a girl truly enjoys playing and indulges herself in it as a woman is playing dress up. No matter whatage oridentity or stature you have , fantasizing about what you aspire and trying to imbibe the same in your physical appearance, even for a little moment, gives you the kind of joy which is incomparable to any other.

The same feverish excitement was shared by my mom and her play mates, who were mostly her own sisters and cousins. They dressed up not for any function or occasion, but they dressed up so that they can fantasize and let their imagination run, and they dressed up for the sake of dressing up and letting go.

What i love about the pictures are the amalgamation of the so evident Chinese roots through her looks and the typical Indian-ness of the 50’s and the 60’s through her clothes. This is the aesthetics ihave personally followed since i have started to understand individual style.

I do somehow feel this is the true representation of our identities as Chinese born and brought up in India through clothes. It’s fascinating how the land you are born in can stay with you for life.

My Grandmom who never wore a salwar kurta or a saree all her life (she was born in China), never stopped her children from wearing what their heart desired. Keeping in mind the conservative surrounding the girls were not allowed to wear revealing clothes such as short skirts and tube tops but they were given the freedom inside the house where they could play dress up and get clicked by my grandfather. It was my grandmother’s way of not restricting her children’s imagination and still keeping them safe from the society around. As i has mentioned earlier, it was like living the best you can in the given circumstances without letting go of the dreams and aspirations.

Mom

My Ma,  LeeHaanSiew (means beauty of the world) is aptly named. She was extremely beautiful, sharp and charming. She loved dressing up and dressing others. She is very close to the kind of personality my kaka Phobo has. She has the same aggressiveness when it comes to protecting family and the same spunk.

The blog story is a document of an amalgamation of my granddads fading photographs, my grandmother’s stories and my mother’s sense of style, beauty and aesthetics. It is my way of documenting and making a fading memory absolute.

 

Settling Influences

 

 

 

MA. with flowers and curly hair, age : 3

MA. School.

 

  

Wedding; left to right (lower row), Mom, Muasi ( maternal aunt), Bua ( Paternal Aunt)

 

 

 

 

                                    

Settling Influences

Kaka Phobo and Ma

Both my grandfathers were passionate about photography but had different ways of getting inspired. My kaka Tete (maternal grandfather) saw inspiration in his family and his passion  for photography came from the inner need to document each member of his family. He used to develop his own photographs delicately mixing chemicals.

While all his 6 kids were asleep at night he would go to the dark corner of the room and switch on his red light and work the whole night, developing numerous pictures he had clicked. My mom tells me- sometimes my Kaka Phobo(Maternal grandmother) would deliberately open the small shutter of the door to see what’s going on inside his little room, which often overexposed the photographs. It was sort of a romantic, fun game they used to play like young lovers do, teasing each other. The photographs which got destroyed in this process also have a story to tell. A story of the love, respect and relationship they share till date.

My mother’s family shifted to Ranchi (Jharkhand) from Calcutta (West Bengal) after the Indo- China war in the 1960’s. They still talk about curfews and hiding themselves from Chinese personals who were collecting Chinese nationals to transport them back to China. I guess by hiding they made a choice to stay back in India. They chose a life which would affect the lives of generations to come.

My kaka tete is 90yrs old now and has Alzheimer’s. But even now, there is one person he can’t live without and can’t let go off even for a second. One person he remembers every second of the day even after his mental condition, one person whose hands he still kisses when she asks him if he is hungry-My KaKaPhobo.

 

Wanderer.Settler: The Wandering Migrants.

Wanderer.Settler: The Wandering Migrants.: Left : My paternal grand father and grandmother Right : My maternal grandfather and grandmother The first record of travel from Chin...

The Wandering Migrants.

Left : My paternal grand father and grandmother
Right : My maternal grandfather and grandmother

The first record of travel from China is provided in the travelogue of Fa0hien who visited Tamluk in the 5th cent. BC. Fa-Hien was a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka to acquire Buddhist manuscripts between 399 to 412 BC. His work is a travel book filled with accounts of early Buddhism and history of numerous countries along the Silk road at the turn of the 5th century. records of immigration for the next 16 century are not reliable.

The first person to come to India and settle down was Yang Tai Chow in 1778 during the British Rule when Calcutta was the capital of the British India. Most of the immigrants from China found a foothold in Calcutta and started working at the Calcutta port. Calcutta because it was the easiest accessible metropolitan area from China by land. Most of them even started their own business of carpentry, tanning and shoe making.

My family’s story of migration is quite different. My Great grandparents decided to leave China and settle down in India due to political and social unrest.

The Qing Dynasty, also known as the Manchu Dynasty, followed the Ming Dynasty in Chinese history, and was the last ruling dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912. It was overthrown following the Xinhai Revolution. Due to this there was major political and economic struggle for the people of China.

During the war people were being killed if they opposed the new Government.

Children and women were being murdered. For the protection of their families my great grandfather along with his family escaped to Rangoon.

In order to save the children from any harm they were carried from one place to the other in tin boxes and food baskets.

My maternal grandmother was born in Rangoon. (a lot of story telling and source of information for us is she.)

When my grandmother turned five, the family decided to move back to China.

After spending a few years there, my great grand father passed away and my great grand mother along with the children returned back to India for a safer peaceful life in Calcutta. In the year 1962 during the Indo China war my family migrated to India for the second time and have been staying here ever since.

Though we’ve made India our homeland, no Chinese leaves his home not intending to return. His hope is always to come back rich, to die and be buried where his ancestors are buried.

This is where it all began. The Lee family belongs to the Central province of the Republic of China - Hupeh or Hubei province, Wuhan being the capital. The name Hubei means “north of the lake”, referring to Hubei’s position, north of Dongting Lake.

My grandfather hasn’t been to china after migrating to India decades ago. Though it’s a life long wish of every Chinese living in India that one day we might be able to visit our origin nation.

 

Through out my 27 years of life I’ve been asked many times where am I from and from which part of China do i belong to.

Now I know exactly where it is on the map

 

*Written by Lisa Lee

 

Chapter 1

My  maternal great grandmother and my maternal grandmother 

~ a person without the knowledge of their past history, origin & culture is like a tree without roots ~ Marcus Garvey

History determines the present as well as the future. It shapes the character of a man, a family, a community, a state and a nation. The world is getting smaller day-by-day & has turned into a global village where all of us have become the Citizens of the World. Today all of us are struggling desperately to keep our legacy & our heritage alive & breathing in this world. People of different races & castes are coming together to raise a new future in this melting hot pot. Thus, reviving lost folk art & culture has become more important than ever. This is my journey to reconnect with my roots & concretize my past & my history. This is just another drop in the ocean.

Being a Chinese Indian, growing up amidst different cultures was not that easy. Even though my parents tried their best to bring us up like normal Chinese kids, influence of the Indian culture always remained dominant. Though everything was not lost. I was forever asked to question and prove my genuineness to others. After a point when embarrassment gave way to curiosity, I began digging into the history and connecting it to the present.

Chinese generation, who have become distant from their roots and motivates them to look into their own family history and take it forward.

*story written by Lisa Lee

 

Introduction

My mom has always and always will influence my sense in fashion and the way I carry myself today. My next story in wanderer.settler would be about my family and there relationship with fashion in midst of stories about partition, the indo -china war and the fleeing of my grandparents from the Red army some 100 years back. 2 world wars and many conflicts later, I will try my best to document and connect the dots through my eyes...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wandering in the Streets of China

This is in Shanghai in 2009, where designer clothes, shoes and bags are the rage. Every woman in China metropolis loves to look like a model from a glossy magazine, head to toe in designer garb.
The mother and child duo was totally contrasting from everyone around them. The child was tied to her waist with a hand woven cloth (very traditional to the way 'primitive' tribes and villagers carry there child around). She briefly stopped in front of this man made fountain, had a conversation with her child and then moved on....

Fisherman's market China, Beijing, 2009
The traditional textile in China is unlike what the world image of it is today. Just type " Indigo dyeing in China" on Google. You will see a whole different china than just the land of population, mass production and designer fakes. :)

qípáo (pronounced as ch'i-p'ao) .
In English it is referred to the traditional Mandarin Gown. The gown is stylish and tight fitting. According to popular belief this is the traditional dress of Chinese women, but infact it was made popular in the 1920's by the socialites and upper class women in Shanghai.

Indian wanderers

Bhuj, Gujarat.

Jharkhand, Bihar

Bhuj, Gujarat

Wandered into a settlement...

I travel everyday for work, on my way I always see the "Village Expats" as I call them who have wandered into big cities to settle, selling flowers and odd toys made in china and sometimes even begging. I must say sometimes what these women wear makes me envious. I have often wondered how and where do they get these indigenous woven fabrics, prints and embroideries from? I see so much richness hidden in their poverty.

The Red Salvage.

The selvage is the term for the self-finished edges of fabric. The selvages keep the fabric from unravelling or fraying. It is a result of how the fabric is created. One of the main and the most attractive features of the Munda textile is the combination of the Red and the white.

Symbolism of Red and Indigo
Our odyssey led us to discover many insights as to how the rang or colour of the mundari costumes came into existence. History unwinds into many facts and figures or just assumptions. we learnt that the birth of the colour red came into the munda being after an incident which was described to us. Legend says that there seamed to be two Mundari community members who travelled and finally reached the district of maranghada where they wished to settle but were not sure if the gods or nature would be pleased with their decision.

We were told that they prayed and stringed a rooster to the tree as a gesture of their offerings. If the gods were pleased the cock would remain alive till the next morning or else would be eaten by the wild. The wait overnight was worth tithe gods and nature were pleased with their worship and offerings and the animal was found alive. They then slaughtered the rooster as an act of celebration and offered the blood to the mighty, making the red of the blood extremely symbolic. This was as far as the legend narrates. The colour red was then procured from the sal tree seed oil and the palash flower for the purpose of dye stuff, also called as the raanga sali Now a days due to the cost chemical dyes have taken over. The other colour predominantly used was kora or natural tone indicating purity.

 

 

The warrior dancers . Jharkhand . 2011

Ranchi, Jharkhand . 2011
The Mundas have always been a shy tribe keeping to themselves in the jungles. They mostly reside near river, waterfalls and near the mountains. They procure there food and shelter from nature itself. Originally they were hunters and gatherers but with time they discovered the science of growing food for themselves and from a gatherer the Mundas became settlers making agriculture their main source of procuring food.
Currently the Mundas reside in villages and towns formed near mountains and jungles. To reach where they reside is still a task in itself. To reach where the tribe resides, rivers and lakes needs to be crossed as they are situated in remote places still untouched by excessive human civilization and technological advancement. But in the past few decades because of the government taking new initiative towards their development the geographical distinction of the tribe is fading away with the growing contact and insurgence of people outside the tribe.

 

 

Muranghada Village (Munda Tribe), Ranchi, Jharkhand. 2011. The Brides Mother.

 

The Munda Tribe. During our Craft Documentation at Ranchi, Jharkhand.

We dived into this one with no prior idea of what we are going to witness...The first night in a abandoned school with a bunch of tribal children we slept under a roof full of fireflies not knowing how dangerous it was. We lay there in awe and wonder looking at those green twinkle on the roof...we met people who were way much wiser and intelligent in there humbleness and kindness than the "modern man"...we walked into the Naxal area lured by the greed of learning more about the Munda's...We were shown a spectacle of dance, music and folklores..
 

 The word ‘Munda’ literally means head. In the Mundari language the word means head of the village.

The Mahabharata says that the Mundas were driven away from the from east india by the Aryans and they travelled north west crossing Azamgarh,Bundelkhand and Rohtahsgarh and finally landed in the Chhotanagpur platue.

It is marvellous how not so far from the a city that bustles with life activity of urban India, few people still exist who till date live in close proximity with nature. The Mundas worship nature, they derive their food and shelter from nature and most importantly their lives, traditions and customs are deeply inspired and rooted in nature.

The Mundari tribe do have a lot of stories to narrate. Every description and every discussion starts with a story which are then interlaced and entwined with words of poetry, the notes of their music and the steps of their dance this is their way of life.. Music, dance and poetry are the heart and soul of the Munda being.

Now and when we sit and reflect back on our journey we hear the drum beating we feel the thumping of their feet and the swooping of their gamcha, a blur of red and white circling around the tamarind tree and the smiling strong faces of THE MUNDA

Kachchh, Gujarat 2009 . Wanderers of the Rann

 

The bright red and lustre of the mushroo. Yes! Red is my favourite color and i love all the cliche's it stands for as well...Love, Danger, Happiness and prosperity!

Settlers of Rann. Gujarat. 2009



 As a Graduate in Fine art I was always drawn towards the aesthetics of "ugly beautiful" as its called and it is at the core of my being and the way I see and perceive things, people, situations etc. This picture was taken during our trip to Bhuj , Kachchh, Gujarat while I was pursuing my PG in Apparel from NID. It changed how i looked at Design completely. We went there to study these "wanderers". I realized the extinction of their craft is largely because they are turning in to settlers, yearning for the same thing what we all want stability, security and surety but does settling provides us with any of the above? This reminds me of a quote by Tony Fry " The future is sustainable if we use nomadic knowledge from the past and imagination of the future."