By Susan Aurinko
Self Portrait in Mirror, Delhi
As long as I can remember I’d wanted to go to India. It probably started when I was a hippie in art school – our shirts and dresses and bedspreads were made of block-
printed Indian cotton, the Beatles were traveling to India, bringing the sounds of the sitar westward, long Indian-made earrings dangled from our ears, and strands of Indian beads hung around our necks.
Art School Self
Fast forward more than 40 years to 2007, when I could finally go, having an excellent Assistant to man the helm at the gallery while I traveled to India for the first time. Visa in hand, I was on my way! A friend who had also always wanted to go to India traveled with me and we checked into Claridge’s, New Delhi. Our first day, we met a lovely bicycle rikshaw driver called Akbar, and I told him that we’d keep him for as long as we never saw another tourist. True to his word, Akbar took us to places tourists would never have known about or been. That lasted for three days, when he arranged a car for us to take us to Agra. The road along the way was filled with creepingly slow traffic, and a wild variety of vendors and snake-holding men for you to have a photo taken with. The car had springs poking out of the seats, and was a bit of a mess, but we totally enjoyed chatting with the driver and his two buddies, one of whom was Akbar. Suffice to say we kept the windows rolled up! Although it’s undoubtedly a tourist trap, the Taj Mahal is truly something one should see up close – the workmanship is astonishing. I shot for a couple of hours in Old Agra, and we returned to Delhi tired but happy.
“Roses, Delhi” from “Still Point India” cover
Our next stop was Varanasi, where we settled into the Taj hotel, (which has since changed its name due to the attacks in Mumbai.) Funny enough, when I had checked in and was waiting for the elevator, the door opened and who should step out but Lew Manilow! He and Susan were on a whirlwind trip with The Chicago Council for Foreign Relations. It is indeed a small world! We were invited to dine at the home of my friend’s client, a revered professor. One of the other guests was Navneet Raman, the owner of Kriti Gallery. His family is one of the oldest, most prominent families in Benares, which is now called Varanasi. Navneet’s mother was a designer specializing in modern dress created from local textiles, which in the case of Benares, meant a lot of gold thread work– the most elegant Indian textiles come from the area. He took us to the factories where the fabric was made, nothing like one would think – these were buildings like small homes, each room housing a single weaver who hand loomed the many yards it takes to create a sari. I bought several heavily gold and silver embroidered long scarves and shawls with exquisite embroidery to bring home and a beautiful Benarsi sari – the beginning of a collection.
One of my Benarsi Saris (photo by Evelyn Daitchman) In the Buddha Room at Primitive, Chicago
Meanwhile, when I got back to Chicago, Navneet, the gallerist I’d met at the dinner party in Varanasi, had spent some time on my website and offered to give me a show the following year and represent me in India. I had shown some work in Kolkata/Calcutta at Ganges Gallery, but they didn’t represent me, so I was free to say yes. As I was editing images and preparing for my upcoming show of India photographs at Chicago’s ThinkArt Gallery, I was thinking ahead to the show in India. The Chicago show went well, and I began printing for the show at Kriti Gallery. I sent the prints over so Navneet could get them framed for the show in early 2011 and booked my flights. I arrived in Delhi, and on to Varanasi, and upon arriving, learned that a water main under the street outside had broken, and the gallery had been flooded. The work, which was framed and ready, was fortunately in an upstairs storage area, but there was no way to have an opening or exhibition. Navneet, who acted as a kind of unofficial cultural officer for the city, sent me out with a cultural guide for a couple of days so I could make new work. He wanted more for the show since it was going to be postponed. I then traveled to Rajasthan, attended the Jaipur Literature Fest, which was amazing, and shot in Jaipur for a week or so. Back in Chicago, I edited and sent Navneet six or seven more images to frame for the show. I was also working on a book, Still Point, India, which was to be printed in India to be ready for the show. In the meantime, one of the images was used as the cover of a wonderful fiction anthology, A Stranger Among Us.
Susan at ThinkArt show opening
In early 2013 I traveled to India again for the opening of my exhibition. Several days into the trip, eating in a British restaurant, I ate a bite of tomato without thinking, and got violently ill. I have never been so sick. Fortunately, Navneet’s sister’s wife is a brilliant young doctor, and she took great care of me, so I was able to be at my opening, if a bit shaky and pale. The playwright/author Mridula Behar flew in from her home in Jaipur to recite her Hindi translation of my poem India Song in tandem with me reciting it in English, (both versions appear in the book). It ended up being a really big deal – the Times of India covered it and I was on the front page the next day – me, looking very, very pale, but in the most exquisite silver-blue Benarsi sari!
Times of India Front Page
A few days later, I departed India for the last time, but I think I left a small bit of my heart there – the beautiful country, its warm and welcoming people, and above all, the textiles! When the book came out in the states, I had several launches, one of them being at the Eye on India Festival at the University of Chicago’s Logan Center, where Mridula and I again recited the Hindi and English versions of my poem, both in saris, naturally. I love wearing them whenever there’s an appropriate event – my daughter actually asked me to wear one to her engagement party. She said, “I know you love those clothes, and it makes you happy to wear them.” I also wore a coral hued raw silk shawl from India at her wedding.
India is a colorful memory for me, but I have a closet full of glittering saris and jewelry, and a drawer full of embroidered and embellished scarves and shawls that will always keep those memories alive and next month I’m launching the Ganges Long Scarf, shown below. See you here next month when I share with you my images and thoughts on muses, mythology, and other esoterica Have a great final month of 2024 and don’t forget to live artistically!
Susan Aurinko
@susanaurinko (Instagram)
www.aurinkophoto.com
www.lensflaireditions.com
Ganges long scarf
