Tasveer Ghar: A Digital Archive of South Asian Popular Visual Culture
Good Morning – Welcome – Svagatam
Stylistically and technologically, calendar art is a modern art form born of the Anglo-Indian cultural encounter, though obviously it has roots in several indigenous traditions also. Thus the recourse to 'tradition' in calendar art is both a reaction to, and is matched by, the appeal and prestige of westernized modes of representation. 'Good morning' is a nice example of this. A pert little girl with tight red curls and blue eyes, dressed in a tartan frock, bursts through a paper wrapper, saluting: 'Good morning'! The picture was presumably copied from somewhere -- from where one cannot tell, though it has a sentimentally 'forties' ring to it. But the gesture of salute and the phrase of greeting are evocatively reminiscent of 'cantonment' culture and British presence, and of the legacy of English-medium schooling that continues to thrive.
On the other hand, the gesture may be intended as ironic, an appropriation of the 'other', a play on India's multi-lingual heritage. After all, 'Good morning' is now a genuine Indian greeting, quite as legitimate in the context of contemporary culture as the hit-song line: ‘I love you, I love you, I love you' (abbreviated to ILU, ILU, ILU) which has so brilliantly captured the popular imagination.
Auto-rikshaw and truck graffiti exploit to the hilt the entertaining potentialities of bilingual and bi-orthographic word and number-play and punning -- for instance, rendering the honorific suffix 'Ji', with the English letter ‘G' in the graffito 'AG OG devar G' (hey there, you there, husband's younger brother!): rather tongue-in-check and slightly naughty, for the relation of a sister-in-law to her husband's younger brother is a flirtatious one, with hints of the erotic.
'Aum sweet Aum' is an even better example of the semiotic possibilities of the hybrid. With the sacred symbol Om (Aum) at its centre and an invocation to the gods as its legend, its English title is obviously a pun on 'Home Sweet Home'! One wonders, is it seriously intended as a reminder of the polysemicity of the sacred Om (Aum), or just a bit of fun in a double register? Or maybe it is the work of Krishna Consciousness devotees, whose active patronisation of calendar art style representations of Lord Krishna has given the art a new global visibility, and who have taken very seriously the principle of 'play' in Krishna worship.