The unmaking of Chintu

The year was 1996 Mumbai was still a little bit of Bombay accepting us migrant cousins with open arms Chintan Upadhyay and I were among the many who had come to the city to make her our home Mumbai was beautiful and affectionate inspiring and challenging The tallerthantall apartments wowed us the shimmering lights of Crossroads mall and the display windows of Rupam and VAMA showrooms excited us We were romancing with the local trains and rented homes in decrepit lower middleclass societies savouring our starvation in late night roadside bhurjipav meals amidst the goldenbrown haze of the sleeping city revisiting our tangential dreams And we knew we were growing up in an environment that we would romanticise about some dayBut I am digressingWe were together at the Faculty of Fine Arts the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda We couldnrsquot take the lsquoismsrsquo and theories that we thought the world the art world in particular was drugged with We wanted to create our own idiom our own language our own movement We wanted to change the world We were rebels without a pause our shabby kurtas spearheading the mutiny Baroda gave us the freedom to be We revelled in it Little had I imagined that Chintanrsquos freedom would be abruptly curtailed some day for what would look like an unlimited period of timeBut I am digressing againThe MSU faculty taught us to think differently humouring our attempts to create the revolution A revolution of another kind was simultaneously being created by one Dr Manmohan Singh The wise man sure was doing his bit to prod and perturb us lesser mortals While Ganesha was drinking milk straight from the carton McDonaldrsquos was about to launch in India Liberalisation and globalisation were ceasing to be mere buzz words We could see the results in the hostel common room with MTVrsquos funky graphics staring at us as we discovered a whole new universe all bright and beautifulBefore we could realise we were in a strange uncomfortable place We could no longer figure who or what we were rebelling against It was an odd conflict brewing in our hearts and heads This dispute wasnrsquot just between ideas and ideals The fight was amongst our sanskaari past our Doordarshanbredhumhongekamyaab present and our shinydiscoball future And it was a very tough fight Our middleclass idealism was being hit on its backside by this new India that we did not know much about But we realised we wanted to embrace this India Despite the guiltThe pride in poverty was stupidWe were the gareeb consumerists sold to the idea of consumerism though not having the means to live it It was during these days in Mumbai that I curated what was Chintanrsquos first independent exhibition Titled This Has Been Done Before the exhibition attempted to make a point against what we thought were the prejudiced norms aesthetics and points of view in the world of Indian art The catalogue was complete with a ldquoCommon Minimum Programmerdquo for young artists We had heated debates on what the communication should be Chintan wanted to be loud and vociferous I was recommending a more subdued approach We ended up pompously calling Picasso and Gauguin ldquoderivative artistsrdquo and talked against the ldquobiased and old fashioned attitude of the artists and art historians of the present centuryrdquoThis is how my piece began ldquoWhat exactly is Chintan Upadhyay A frustrated phallicentric nerd out to prove the sexual connotations and escapades of everything surrounding him Or a confused overgrown kid still in animated awe of his trinkets and toys but whispering voices of discontent against the system promoting their production Is he just another faceless addition to a metropolis coming to terms with the various layers of personae being gifted to him by the assemblage of cultures in a big city Or is he simply an artist sensitive to all things red blue and green exploring for an order in disorder despite his own sarcastic sneers against this searchrdquoThe exhibition was a failureNot Chintan though He was sharp enough to figure that all the personas that I had spoken about had to be a subset of this overarching singular persona that he had to become Thatrsquos how the 1990s was preparing us to face the new millennium By becoming a brand new persona enveloping everything The Common Minimum Programme was therefore out of his life As were the thoughts of creating an artistsrsquo collective He himself had to get there first He had to be in a space where he wouldnrsquot have to explain himself and nobody would have to elaborate on ldquoWhat is Chintan Upadhyayrdquo He latched on to the right people allowing them to manufacture him He figured the importance of marketing of full page ads in Bombay Times pushing his works Commemorative Stamps his 2002 exhibition flaunting the presence of filmstars and other pretty people at the opening with wine and cheese we never knew existed and a completely new artistic language was a super hitA brand was bornChintan was always the talented one He knew it in time that it was not about being just an artist It was about being a popular and successful artistThe kind who sellsWhat followed was how most of the rsquo90s kids embraced the changing times We figured that life wasnrsquot about brooding and snorting our middleclass affiliations It was about breaking patterns It was about earning and spending and earning some more to spend some more The conflict that was soon ceased to be It had been dissolved and resolvedChintan of course went beyond that In the quest to become a consumerist he became a heavily marketed consumable product himself over the next 10 years We continued to play conscience keepers to each other although I now suspect our chats infrequent and few were more to flaunt and justify our acts and actions than question them I donrsquot know how convinced I was of the transformation of the ldquoMulticultural face in a cosmopolitan cityrdquo to the mass produced Chintu and also those performance art sessions created to shock and awe but I guess he knew what he was doing Chintan and Hemamdashanother friend from the Faculty of Fine Artsmdashbecame the ldquoit couplerdquo of Mumbairsquos art scene His ldquoganda bachchasrdquo were all over She was kicking some serious ass as an artist of repute in biennales and triennales across the globe Chintanrsquos compromisesmdashartistic and otherwisemdashwere worth the heartburn He had become famous He had arrived He had become one with MumbaiBut then again success and fame have their own trappings The couple learnt it the hard way After petty fights and a public spat over their divorce their love story came to an end Post a formal separation Chintan started work afresh low key and guarded And then suddenly Hema was found murdered What followed was a macabre prime time drama that then turned into a tragedy Insinuations charges and counter charges Cops playing art critics reading motives in his doodles and diary entries A man in jail since December 22 2015 held as a suspect in the double murder of his exwife and her lawyer Guilty until proven innocent And a trial that is still in progress with witnesses yet to be examined and the alleged accused still at large Almost 70 months of confinement Six long years of waitingThe honourable Supreme Court finally granted bail to Chintan on September 17 instructing him to reside in any place other than Mumbai and visit the city only for the purpose of attending court They have banished him from the city that made himBut I am not going to give this a Shakespearean hue and project Chintan as the tragic hero The prolonged and tedious trek that he took from the Borivli shanty to the Juhu house and then to the courtrooms and Thane Jail redefined his art and himself in the process I know of his hopes and desires fears and apprehensions I know he is very many things or that he became very many things that I think he was not I also know that his struggle was real the achievements hardearned I would not want to believe that he would squander it all away to cater to a whim or vindictiveness I know his truth I hope for the world to know it tooI also hope he comes out of this as a more insightful person With the same set of hopes and positivity with which we came to Mumbai in 1996 I may ask him to go back to the Common Minimum Programme when we meet up He owes me a chai and a long conversation About what we were and what we becameWe shall curse the rsquo90s We shall bless the rsquo90sVaibhav Vishal is a Mumbaibased screen writer He cowrote Scam 1992 Follow him on ofnosurnamefame