Added Apr 3, 2006
Ms. Anita Nair's TEXT
Ms. Anita Nair's TEXT
"Anybody who tries from the start to make "universal" art is making a big mistake. That is the problem with international art today. That type of art moves just a very small group of people who, in some way, are trying to do the same thing. All great art that exists started out parochial. For example the Impressionists did not paint France; they painted some part of France; Montmartre, Montparnasse, cafe life. That was not an interpretation of European life, but simply life on the corner. Assyrian art represented the local reality--men hunting lions. Egyptian art showed everyday life. Everything has to start at the beginning, and that beginning is completely local. It's the same thing in literature."- Botero
To understand Murali Nagapuzha, we need to first look at Kerala. Where everyday is a painting. Waiting to be absorbed, distilled and captured.
The sun hangs a whole golden orb in the eastern sky. The wind crackles through the trees and the breeze nudges the undergrowth. The leaves of the palm trees snap. Tear drop leaves rain down from the tamarind trees.
Then there are the fields. Yellow stacks of paddy lie supine on the brown thirsty earth where once they stood green and erect waving their stubbly heads to the gods above.
The tiny mango. Chakkra-kutty. Sweet little thing. You puncture a hole in its skin with your teeth and suck its juice. The mouth is flooded with a sweetness with an aftertaste of wood ash. The yellow of sweetness with an ash belly.
Jack fruits chopped open. The pods drip with honey. Sweetness that glut the belly.
Golden bananas. Huge branches are strung up in shop fronts.
Flowers everywhere. Balsam and hibiscus. Yellow trumpet shaped flowers and tiny ‘ari-poo’ in the hedges. Marigolds. Rajakiredam. Thechi…
Ants scurry. Dragon flies hover. Giant ones with bead like eyes, a red and yellow body and gauzey wings. When hordes of them fly close to the land, it will rain that day, folklore says.
The bamboo cutters arrive. Chopping at the branches. Strangling the bamboo music with the heavy staccato rhythm of the axe.
Clouds gather and move up the coast. The skies darken. Lightening and thunder. The bars of heat loosen and with its first drops a deep dank fragrance. Moist earth laden with the memories of sun baked days and crumbling surfaces. The wetness of rain. The wetness of release.
Fireflies glow. A hair ornament? Could a man bedeck a lover with fireflies?
The night skies are lit up with the moon. The stars don’t twinkle in the moon light.
So this then is the world of Murali Nagapuzha. Part memory. Part nostalgia. Part a deep abiding love for the wonder of the everyday. Add to this the man that Murali is. A composite of many experiences that turned the indignant scrutiny of the conscientious being into an indefinable lode of artistry. When these come together, the world that disturbs Murali Nagapuzha and the world that he has an intimate understanding of and identification with is amalgamated and absorbed to create a whole new artistic dialect.
In this dialect, the vowels are less rounded and the consonants independent. Pause at the childhood series – where in a bucolic setting children frolic and a cow grazes. The hues of the hibiscus and the variegated leaves of the elephant yam are all familiar. Endearing images echoing with the poignancy of nostalgia. We all know that feeling but then what takes the breath away is the washing line of whiter than white clothes where a brassiere fluttering in the breeze is inserted with a certain and casual cheekiness. Never was art more alive and more resolute.
We see this again and again even as angels hover offering excess and more excess to a landscape already saturated with excess or as fish ache to bite and be part of that already laden fisherman’s catch.
As with the cadences of a new dialect that builds itself on the solid syntax of a much used language, Murali Nagapuzha’s work has the resonance of familiarity. We think we know and that we recognize it. Only at first. Murali uses the familiar to entice the eye. Then it is Murali’s world we are privy to. In the Basheer series we are first introduced to the Basheeresque motifs: goats and wondering little boys in ‘half trousers’, clandestine meetings and an ‘umma’ and ‘moplah’ -all positioned in the background while in the foreground Basheer in his armchair waits. This is a Basheer who like Murali draws from the familiar rather than concoct the new. It is both biography and artistic philosophy.
Murali Nagapuzha’s art works with sentiment but at no time are we to dismiss it as sentimental. It is vulnerable in that it allows itself to be perceived as childlike but that is its strength. A child’s innocence, a child’s lack of duplicity, a child like playfulness and a child’s wonder – ‘the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind’-.
In a world, where being accessible is considered being popular and hence less worthy, Murali Nagapuzha takes a risk. Not just is his realm figurative but his artistic motifs are drawn from a landscape that is now part of every tourist brochure. And yet, without being banal or kitschy, Murali Nagapuzha’s artistic terrain marvels at the Kerala contours and colours and makes it his own. To follow Murali there is be enchanted. It cuts off all escape routes and makes it impossible for us to turn away from his mindscape.
What more could an artist aspire for?
Anita Nair is the author of the best selling novels The Better man and Ladies Coupe. Her new novel is Mistress. Her books have been translated into over 25 languages across the world. Visit her at
Ms. Anita Nair's TEXT
"Anybody who tries from the start to make "universal" art is making a big mistake. That is the problem with international art today. That type of art moves just a very small group of people who, in some way, are trying to do the same thing. All great art that exists started out parochial. For example the Impressionists did not paint France; they painted some part of France; Montmartre, Montparnasse, cafe life. That was not an interpretation of European life, but simply life on the corner. Assyrian art represented the local reality--men hunting lions. Egyptian art showed everyday life. Everything has to start at the beginning, and that beginning is completely local. It's the same thing in literature."- Botero
To understand Murali Nagapuzha, we need to first look at Kerala. Where everyday is a painting. Waiting to be absorbed, distilled and captured.
The sun hangs a whole golden orb in the eastern sky. The wind crackles through the trees and the breeze nudges the undergrowth. The leaves of the palm trees snap. Tear drop leaves rain down from the tamarind trees.
Then there are the fields. Yellow stacks of paddy lie supine on the brown thirsty earth where once they stood green and erect waving their stubbly heads to the gods above.
The tiny mango. Chakkra-kutty. Sweet little thing. You puncture a hole in its skin with your teeth and suck its juice. The mouth is flooded with a sweetness with an aftertaste of wood ash. The yellow of sweetness with an ash belly.
Jack fruits chopped open. The pods drip with honey. Sweetness that glut the belly.
Golden bananas. Huge branches are strung up in shop fronts.
Flowers everywhere. Balsam and hibiscus. Yellow trumpet shaped flowers and tiny ‘ari-poo’ in the hedges. Marigolds. Rajakiredam. Thechi…
Ants scurry. Dragon flies hover. Giant ones with bead like eyes, a red and yellow body and gauzey wings. When hordes of them fly close to the land, it will rain that day, folklore says.
The bamboo cutters arrive. Chopping at the branches. Strangling the bamboo music with the heavy staccato rhythm of the axe.
Clouds gather and move up the coast. The skies darken. Lightening and thunder. The bars of heat loosen and with its first drops a deep dank fragrance. Moist earth laden with the memories of sun baked days and crumbling surfaces. The wetness of rain. The wetness of release.
Fireflies glow. A hair ornament? Could a man bedeck a lover with fireflies?
The night skies are lit up with the moon. The stars don’t twinkle in the moon light.
So this then is the world of Murali Nagapuzha. Part memory. Part nostalgia. Part a deep abiding love for the wonder of the everyday. Add to this the man that Murali is. A composite of many experiences that turned the indignant scrutiny of the conscientious being into an indefinable lode of artistry. When these come together, the world that disturbs Murali Nagapuzha and the world that he has an intimate understanding of and identification with is amalgamated and absorbed to create a whole new artistic dialect.
In this dialect, the vowels are less rounded and the consonants independent. Pause at the childhood series – where in a bucolic setting children frolic and a cow grazes. The hues of the hibiscus and the variegated leaves of the elephant yam are all familiar. Endearing images echoing with the poignancy of nostalgia. We all know that feeling but then what takes the breath away is the washing line of whiter than white clothes where a brassiere fluttering in the breeze is inserted with a certain and casual cheekiness. Never was art more alive and more resolute.
We see this again and again even as angels hover offering excess and more excess to a landscape already saturated with excess or as fish ache to bite and be part of that already laden fisherman’s catch.
As with the cadences of a new dialect that builds itself on the solid syntax of a much used language, Murali Nagapuzha’s work has the resonance of familiarity. We think we know and that we recognize it. Only at first. Murali uses the familiar to entice the eye. Then it is Murali’s world we are privy to. In the Basheer series we are first introduced to the Basheeresque motifs: goats and wondering little boys in ‘half trousers’, clandestine meetings and an ‘umma’ and ‘moplah’ -all positioned in the background while in the foreground Basheer in his armchair waits. This is a Basheer who like Murali draws from the familiar rather than concoct the new. It is both biography and artistic philosophy.
Murali Nagapuzha’s art works with sentiment but at no time are we to dismiss it as sentimental. It is vulnerable in that it allows itself to be perceived as childlike but that is its strength. A child’s innocence, a child’s lack of duplicity, a child like playfulness and a child’s wonder – ‘the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind’-.
In a world, where being accessible is considered being popular and hence less worthy, Murali Nagapuzha takes a risk. Not just is his realm figurative but his artistic motifs are drawn from a landscape that is now part of every tourist brochure. And yet, without being banal or kitschy, Murali Nagapuzha’s artistic terrain marvels at the Kerala contours and colours and makes it his own. To follow Murali there is be enchanted. It cuts off all escape routes and makes it impossible for us to turn away from his mindscape.
What more could an artist aspire for?
Anita Nair is the author of the best selling novels The Better man and Ladies Coupe. Her new novel is Mistress. Her books have been translated into over 25 languages across the world. Visit her at
"Anybody who tries from the start to make "universal" art is making a big mistake. That is the problem with international art today. That type of art moves just a very small group of people who, in some way, are trying to do the same thing. All great art that exists started out parochial. For example the Impressionists did not paint France; they painted some part of France; Montmartre, Montparnasse, cafe life. That was not an interpretation of European life, but simply life on the corner. Assyrian art represented the local reality--men hunting lions. Egyptian art showed everyday life. Everything has to start at the beginning, and that beginning is completely local. It's the same thing in literature."- Botero
To understand Murali Nagapuzha, we need to first look at Kerala. Where everyday is a painting. Waiting to be absorbed, distilled and captured.
The sun hangs a whole golden orb in the eastern sky. The wind crackles through the trees and the breeze nudges the undergrowth. The leaves of the palm trees snap. Tear drop leaves rain down from the tamarind trees.
Then there are the fields. Yellow stacks of paddy lie supine on the brown thirsty earth where once they stood green and erect waving their stubbly heads to the gods above.
The tiny mango. Chakkra-kutty. Sweet little thing. You puncture a hole in its skin with your teeth and suck its juice. The mouth is flooded with a sweetness with an aftertaste of wood ash. The yellow of sweetness with an ash belly.
Jack fruits chopped open. The pods drip with honey. Sweetness that glut the belly.
Golden bananas. Huge branches are strung up in shop fronts.
Flowers everywhere. Balsam and hibiscus. Yellow trumpet shaped flowers and tiny ‘ari-poo’ in the hedges. Marigolds. Rajakiredam. Thechi…
Ants scurry. Dragon flies hover. Giant ones with bead like eyes, a red and yellow body and gauzey wings. When hordes of them fly close to the land, it will rain that day, folklore says.
The bamboo cutters arrive. Chopping at the branches. Strangling the bamboo music with the heavy staccato rhythm of the axe.
Clouds gather and move up the coast. The skies darken. Lightening and thunder. The bars of heat loosen and with its first drops a deep dank fragrance. Moist earth laden with the memories of sun baked days and crumbling surfaces. The wetness of rain. The wetness of release.
Fireflies glow. A hair ornament? Could a man bedeck a lover with fireflies?
The night skies are lit up with the moon. The stars don’t twinkle in the moon light.
So this then is the world of Murali Nagapuzha. Part memory. Part nostalgia. Part a deep abiding love for the wonder of the everyday. Add to this the man that Murali is. A composite of many experiences that turned the indignant scrutiny of the conscientious being into an indefinable lode of artistry. When these come together, the world that disturbs Murali Nagapuzha and the world that he has an intimate understanding of and identification with is amalgamated and absorbed to create a whole new artistic dialect.
In this dialect, the vowels are less rounded and the consonants independent. Pause at the childhood series – where in a bucolic setting children frolic and a cow grazes. The hues of the hibiscus and the variegated leaves of the elephant yam are all familiar. Endearing images echoing with the poignancy of nostalgia. We all know that feeling but then what takes the breath away is the washing line of whiter than white clothes where a brassiere fluttering in the breeze is inserted with a certain and casual cheekiness. Never was art more alive and more resolute.
We see this again and again even as angels hover offering excess and more excess to a landscape already saturated with excess or as fish ache to bite and be part of that already laden fisherman’s catch.
As with the cadences of a new dialect that builds itself on the solid syntax of a much used language, Murali Nagapuzha’s work has the resonance of familiarity. We think we know and that we recognize it. Only at first. Murali uses the familiar to entice the eye. Then it is Murali’s world we are privy to. In the Basheer series we are first introduced to the Basheeresque motifs: goats and wondering little boys in ‘half trousers’, clandestine meetings and an ‘umma’ and ‘moplah’ -all positioned in the background while in the foreground Basheer in his armchair waits. This is a Basheer who like Murali draws from the familiar rather than concoct the new. It is both biography and artistic philosophy.
Murali Nagapuzha’s art works with sentiment but at no time are we to dismiss it as sentimental. It is vulnerable in that it allows itself to be perceived as childlike but that is its strength. A child’s innocence, a child’s lack of duplicity, a child like playfulness and a child’s wonder – ‘the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind’-.
In a world, where being accessible is considered being popular and hence less worthy, Murali Nagapuzha takes a risk. Not just is his realm figurative but his artistic motifs are drawn from a landscape that is now part of every tourist brochure. And yet, without being banal or kitschy, Murali Nagapuzha’s artistic terrain marvels at the Kerala contours and colours and makes it his own. To follow Murali there is be enchanted. It cuts off all escape routes and makes it impossible for us to turn away from his mindscape.
What more could an artist aspire for?
Anita Nair is the author of the best selling novels The Better man and Ladies Coupe. Her new novel is Mistress. Her books have been translated into over 25 languages across the world. Visit her at
Ms. Anita Nair's TEXT
"Anybody who tries from the start to make "universal" art is making a big mistake. That is the problem with international art today. That type of art moves just a very small group of people who, in some way, are trying to do the same thing. All great art that exists started out parochial. For example the Impressionists did not paint France; they painted some part of France; Montmartre, Montparnasse, cafe life. That was not an interpretation of European life, but simply life on the corner. Assyrian art represented the local reality--men hunting lions. Egyptian art showed everyday life. Everything has to start at the beginning, and that beginning is completely local. It's the same thing in literature."- Botero
To understand Murali Nagapuzha, we need to first look at Kerala. Where everyday is a painting. Waiting to be absorbed, distilled and captured.
The sun hangs a whole golden orb in the eastern sky. The wind crackles through the trees and the breeze nudges the undergrowth. The leaves of the palm tree