Art As Commerce

by Kailash Khandelwal

From early childhood, I had absorbed the belief that artists belonged to the world of Goddess Saraswati — creative, gentle, humble, and far removed from material concerns. Pursuit of money belonged to the realm of Goddess Lakshmi. Growing up in a business family, surrounded by relatives whose lives were shaped by commerce, only reinforced this idea in me. To me, Saraswati and Lakshmi lived in separate worlds, and never the twain shall meet.

The first artist I observed closely as a child was a music teacher arranged to give lessons to my sister, more as a customary requirement for matrimonial prospects than as any serious musical pursuit. I would sometimes accompany her to the nearby school where he taught in the evenings, and there I watched, fascinated, as his fingers seemed to glide and dance across the harmonium.  Once a week, he would visit our home, where my mother served him homemade delicacies prepared in desi ghee. Even as a young boy, I noticed his obvious craving for the delicacies, which felt awkward to me. It ran contrary to my childish idea of a “Saraswati putra,” someone I imagined to be above such ordinary desires.

As I came to know him a little more, I began to notice other details. He looked almost sickly and carried a strange, unpleasant odor around him.

When I entered my family business, I still found time to contribute articles to a few local dailies. This brought me into contact with another kind of “Saraswati putra” — artists of the written word: local editors, writers, journalists, and poets. The closer I came to their world, the more serious cracks appeared in my romantic image of them. I began to see ordinary human desires and, at times, an open pursuit of money — not very different from the world of commerce I had grown up around. Jealousy, greed, petty rivalries, and crude habits often lived comfortably beside creative and writing skills. At times, their instinct for finding money-making opportunities seemed to cross the bounds of artistic grace and decency, appearing crude and unbecoming.

When I moved to the USA, my interaction with the world of artists expanded further. I got a chance to observe artists from close quarters — stage performers, painters, dancers, musicians, Bollywood stars, classical singers, and performers of many shades, from pop and hip-hop to religious and not-so-religious forms of art. My already dwindling impression of artists did not fail me this time either. I was no longer surprised to find the same weaknesses . The distance between art and commerce, which I had once imagined to be so wide, narrowed even further.

Having too often seen the mundane side of artists dwarfed by the lofty ideals their art claimed to represent, I no longer place them on a high pedestal. Still, I genuinely feel good that many artists today are financially better off than the struggling artists I had observed over the years.

During my last visit to my small town in India, after a long gap, we were catching up on old news. In the middle of that conversation, someone mentioned in passing that the music teacher I might remember had died abruptly from some minor illness. The news broke my heart, though I kept my feelings to myself.
On my flight back to the USA, my mind kept returning to the music teacher — and with that, to his body odor that had once made me quietly uncomfortable. For quite some time now, I have understood that it came from his inability to afford regular baths or afford regular washing of his clothes.