Indian dolls reveal the pageant of life

Indian dolls reveal the pageant of life

JAKARTA (JP): Pained by present-day politics? Sick of counting
stocks and shares? Stories of terrible terrorists becoming
tiresome? Take a break then, and escape those streets of Jakarta
that lead to financial pursuits alone for the sanctuary of the
National Museum, where the vivid color of an exhibition of dolls
from India is bound to return the smile to your soul.

Dolls inspired by Indian women and the deliriously colored
clothes they wear. There are dolls in red, blue, yellow, some
solar, some nocturnal, dark-haired, dancing, covered from
head-to-toe in jewels and rings and yet another doll with her
forehead smeared in vermilion, a pigment the color of blood. All
these female dolls are accompanied at the exhibition by their
male counterparts.

There are brides dressed to kill, in celebration of the sacred
union, of the beginning of life itself, and tribal women
squatting on the roadside, surrounded by their magical wares in a
centuries-old scene, providing a stunning meditation on time
itself.

The exhibition, which runs until Sept. 25, is a lavish pageant
of the diversity and variety of life in India, a civilization at
least five millennia old, if not more. India, one billion
individual men and women each differing from one another, all
living in a private universe of thought and feeling. Together
they form a country that is baffling, complex, full of tragedy,
but also of manifold opportunities.

In some ways it is just like Indonesia, where this world is
looked upon by some merely as a woven warp and woof on water,
where the present and future continue to reflect the past, but
the complexity of modern life has thrown some into conflict and
confusion. For both Indians and Indonesians, the concept of unity
in diversity seems to have become a puzzle unto themselves in
these conflicting times.

The 50 dolls on display are a microimpression of India's 130
languages and 1,600 dialects, a country where a multitude of
sects and religions have resided sometimes in conflict, but more
often in peace since the cosmos came to be, even before man's
memory.

There is nothing negative to say about the fine craftsmanship
of all those who so meticulously created and adorned the
beautiful dolls on exhibit, but perhaps the organizers at the
Indian Council of Cultural Relations could have included in the
exhibition images of modern Indian. All those Indians who are not
in the habit of dressing up like Christmas trees, like the
farmer, teacher and the social worker, are conspicuous by their
absence from the exhibition. For if India indeed is the river of
time that has been flowing since the dawn of creation, gathering
new streams, absorbing new thoughts, technologies and peoples,
than surely it must include the pauper along with the prince in
its sacred waters.

-- Mehru Jaffer