Tara Books: the art

"The visual culture in India is more sophisticated than other cultures". This was one of the comments made when I was doing my research at Tara Books.  I can clearly see that Indians are comfortable with complex visual patterns. Take the gates with their intricate carvings for example.

Or the strange mix of human and animal in this monkey god statue of Hanuman (he is over 3 stories high  

Or the colour and design of the entrance to this small shrine.

Visually, there is no single "India" and this lends itself to a sophistication perhaps. This seems clear in the juxtapositioning of visual imagery in the streets as well as the art.

As a Canadian travelling in India, it took all my power not to stand gaping at every street corner, trying to take in the layered visual complexities and meanings surrounding me: cultural references, motifs, beautiful intricacies, colour and life, against a backdrop of activity, dirt roads, rubble, and lush greenery. There is consistency and inconsistency, young and old, tradition and modernity, languidly and the fast life, squalor and splendor, vast poverty and the promises of wealth. Everything is mashed up into a confusion of images and cultural references.  There appears to be no "one India" culturally or visually.

In the time I spent in the Tara Book Building, there was a consistent emphasis on the book form as the perfect form to represent these "different Indias". One tribe's traditional art will render the same phenomenon entirely differently from another. Tara is committed to using the book to best locate and give space for these perspectives.

The book Beasts of India is a great example of this. Different traditions interpret and yield any given creature entirely differently and illustrate a vast array of perspectives and references. For example the lion:

Within any art tradition, different individual artists can fold and stir several influences and styles into their work for a different outcome. For example, the Buffalo and Bulls below are both by Gond artists:

Tara is committed to reflecting this diversity. The book building provides the space and the publishing company provides the means and support for connecting to these various artists across space and cultures.

The art on the inner walls of the book building also reflects this commitment to diversity. It is seamlessly integrated into the space itself.

My descriptions and pictures here really do not do this justice at all. Any separation of art from interior space is purely of my artificial devising; As with Tara's values and processes, the art and colour flows here as seamlessly between spaces as sari silk billows on a soft zephyr

  The Snake (by Subhash Amiliyar and Gangu Nai) is a delightful treat for the eye.  In the Bhil tribal form, from Madhya Pradesh, it chases a rat up into the editorial space at the top of the stairs. 

  A wily use of the swirling spiral staircase.

The horse mural is also a playful use of space, while this particular form of art is one used as a form of worship.

  The vibrancy of the paint was one of my happy discoveries: detail of the horse. 

The piece de resistance for the book building might be considered to be the wall mural the Tree.  Reaching over 18 feet, this joyful art connects the liveliness and colour of birds to the peace and quiet industry found inside these walls. 

It evolved as the artist spent time, and required the artist to be in the space for its moment conception. It was the artist's magical response to the space itself. 

Artist: Bhajju Shyam (Nightlife of Trees). 

The tree's motifs continue through to liven up the architectural partitions.

Like all of the art here, through its presence the magic of that artistic birth moment lives on to weave its gorgeousness into the space for now and years to come.

All in all, a wonderful use of space, light, art and integration of Tara's vision with the artist's talents. Tara is such a unique and special publisher. The books themselves area also exquisite materializations of this vision, talent and skill.

Tara, the book building

The book building is such an incredible space that this post will focus on it. The art on the walls and floor warrant a separate posting in their own right and equally so the remarkable individuals and office culture

This past week has been a glimpse into this happy space that is the Tara book building. All clean whiteness and light, tall ceilings and gorgeous leafy trees tinkling outside the breezy space, it is designed to most effectively use a very small footprint in a unique way by a local Chennai architect Mahesh Radhakrishnan who likened the grilles on the windows to musical notes: "In music, the notes come and the pauses follow. Here the pauses come first, representing spaces and everything is build around these creative spaces". The design was done with as much collaboration as possible, like Tara Books itself. Book Building's function is multipurpose, serving as a gallery, community gathering space, event and workshop classroom, offices and bookstore. Each area has a distinct feel yet each space flows smoothly into the next. It is ecofriendly, as very little of it needs air conditioning as the fans and breeze keep it cool. The lights are off all day as it is bright enough without. And solar panels on the roof mostly power the computers

Fully modern with nods to traditional Indian indigenous  and folk art in the art in the paintings and splashes of colour this is a welcoming and inspiring space and I was loathe to leave it after my research was done!

As you come from the noise and busyness of the street, the clean lines are  a beacon for serenity 

The first thing you experience is the delightful bookstore proudly displaying  one copy of each book (don't worry , you get a copy from their overstock when you make a purchase) 

There is a bright little nook for children overcome with creativity to draw whatever fills their imaginations 

My working space was the marvellous  two story courtyard gathering area with the beautiful tree art by the artist of Nightlife of Trees

Upstairs the offices lend themselves to collaboration  and openness with a sunny yellow kitchen space where staff share food and conversation and a lovely open central conversation hub  that invites the breeze to share and mingle with the voices 

The accounting and sales offices are open to the courtyard below. Design and editorial are in the loft at the very top of a swirl of spiral stairs

There are no walls separating the design and editors and this mirrors Tara's philosophy policy that the  book form is the perfect marriage of the design and language

All in all it is a happy place, the space is consistent with the values. There is no hidden curriculum  denoting power or exaggerating status differences between employees, the openness accessibility and clean design combining modern and traditional fully reflect Tara's  values as shown through its books. No wonder the employees all live coming to work everyday! As did I during my short stint here

Postcards from India

In the last few days when I have not been at Tara Books I have been exploring the area in Chennai around my hotel. Called Adyar it is a residential district just off the main thoroughfare, low key, relaxed and safe - hard to comprehend in a city of 30 million 

Here are a few scenes from those experiences 

Rickshaws: like riding a roller coaster at street level. They are a three wheeled motorbike with a roof and a backseat for passengers. These have brought out the adrenaline thrillseeker in me and are a highlight so far

Women decorate entryways with rice flour or chalk. The Kolam is meant to decorate invitingly, while the rice traditionally gave ants something to feast on outside the home. Each evening before sunset Hindu women wash off the previos decoration and start afresh. Each loop and knot is folkloric and rich with  meaning. Used in Tamil Nado state and in many others in India, these Kolam are a pragmatic and symbolic nod to the inter connectivity of all life forms

Tara Books had a a motif borrowed from the Kolam tradition painted on the tiles in their offices 

D signifies the direction of the design offices

Vibrant colour is everywhere. My Iphone is pitiful in trying to capture it. Against the mud and dirt coloured backdrop, happy shades of pomegranate, fuscia, nutmeg, saffron, teal, and ochre pop out and arrest the senses 

The food is another means by which to take my appreciation of the colours to a whole new level

The array of colour and variety of diahes is staggering, and it plus all strictly vegetarian

Here was my simple hotel breakfast yesterday 

I have falling in love with idlees the white rice dumplings shown and sambar the mild roasted lentil based stews spiced with with coriander seeds, fenugreek, whole red chilis, curry and coriander leaves, flavoured with tamarind.  The hotel cook has been preparing my meals with increasing spice so perhaps there are hot ones as well that I have not tried

Also delicious are the chutneys and fantastic tea prepared black or with milk and ginger as what we know as chai

Yum

More postcards to come

Two years in the making

This morning I am off for my first round of fieldwork with Tara Books. This an exciting moment for me, two years in the making. I have been taking classes and designing research papers to give me the background to conduct this work for years, from a class on English and Globalization In a Critical Context, to Indian Social Movements. From English language publishing in India, the role of the Social Economy for change, Community Development to a course on Transformative Education for social action. 

How to wind all this into a cohesive narrative that understands the people practices and mission behind Tara will be my work going forward. I have no doubt what I witness now will be daunting to grasp. Are publishing offices here very different from Canadian ones? How would my colleagues feel about an Indian scholar wandering through my offices at home in BC? If I were not white educated and employed /funded, would I be allowed this opportunity? I am acutely aware of my race and class here as the minority. If you want to feel rich just come to India

So the time has come for me to pull a thread of sense from these vast readings and weave a path. Ironic that all this sensible planning now cumulates into the very first action: stepping into the chaos of the road in an autorickshaw! 

Here I go, world. Ready as I will ever be

On awakening this morning

I arrived I'm Chennai last night at two am. Unlike everything you expect my arrival was efficient and speedy 

I set my alarm for this morning but I didn't need it: the cacophony outside at 6 am would wake a hibernating bear. But it wasn't car horns that greeted my slumber, lumbering hot along a slow road. Instead it was the joyful clatter of tropical birds vying for their mates. This is tropical India not the one so many of us see in tourist photos for the Taj Mahal. I feel I have landed in Belize or Tahiti. Palm fronds grace the maze of pink and green residences outside. The horns will come later no doubt.

Knowing the path: qualitative vs. quantitative research design

I laughed when I saw this posted on Facebook earlier this month. Knowing where the path is going to lead is always the challenge when the plans never match the reality! This is true in my life, as in research as well.

Any researcher needs to plan the best approach for gathering data and how best to fulfil the needs of the project. This is what informs the the research design.

In a case study like mine, if the aim was to understand a cause-effect relationship, e.g., what is the effect of Tara's books on children who read them, then quantitative data approaches might be the best approach to data gathering. This would involve me designing a survey or set of multiple choice questions for an interview to be able to quantify the responses, or watching children and measuring their responses, or something similar.

However, in this research I am not looking for cause-effect relationships. What I seek is not explanation, but understanding. The two are subtly different. Explanation is a type of understanding that is narrower, and the resulting response is similar to labelling something: It's "done", off the to-do list, explained and simplified and no more thinking is required. 

But understanding seeks a different orientation: understanding doesn't seek to simply but to explore complexity. "We understand ourselves and others only when we transfer our own lived experience into every kind of expression of our own and other people's lives" (Wilhelm Dilthey, 1895). It requires a sort of compassion to recreate the motives and intentions of the people involved and put oneself in another's shoes. Understanding is connected to empathy in a way that explanation is not (Henrik von Wright, 1971).

When I designed my Tara Books project I wanted to find out how publishers could rise to the responsibilities of modern living. All of us live with this dilemma, whether we are conscious of it or not. We all impact what happens in the world and we all live with the consequences of others actions, this is true whether we are looking at our lives at the level of our businesses, families or as individuals. How we deal with the problems of our age: the environment, our communities, inequality, complexity, insecurity.  Some people plug away and try to forget about it. Others take responsibility for their actions and watch their spending and consumerism and try to direct it towards more positive ends. Others go further and actively try to change it.

So my intention here is that I want to see how a publishing operation can use its influence and resources in regards to these issues. I want to understand the motives, ideas, intentions, orientations of such a publisher who seems to consciously work to change things.

So I designed this study with the intention of including interpretation and understanding, rather than searching for causal relationships This means for my study that that will I rely on observation and open-ended interviews. 

I have no idea where this is all going to lead. A huge part of the work is to make obvious my privilege and crumble my preconceptions and ideas.

My assertions are probably all wrong and will change drastically from where I started. This changing research, the issues that will come forth as the path unfolds, is what makes it emergent and responsive. I will be throwing out ideas as I go along.
And that is the point.

I guess it all leads to the same place: embracing the unknown.  But if I can't learn to embrace chaos, I better not be heading to India!

Welcome to my travel and research blog

First off, if you have been given this link to follow my research, then thank you for your support!

This blog has been created exclusively for supporters and well-wishers of my project Book Publishing and Social Change. It will form the research component of my Masters of Arts degree for Athabasca University's Integrated Studies program in Community Development Studies. My research is going to include a trip to India to for field research on Tara Books, as well as a literature review and case study analysis.

More info on Tara Books is here

While I am in India I am also going to Karnataka Province to assist a Canadian Volunteer agency with a baby sea turtle program.

Here is a map of India, I circled where I will be going

This research is partly supported by my IndieGoGo campaign, thank you everyone who helped me! I am so honoured and gifted to have your support.

In addition to the generosity of my IndieGoGo supporters, I will be receiving a Graduate Student Research Fund grant - a huge honour. This fund is provided to students who will undertake sustained research and can demonstrate that their research will contribute to the advancement of knowledge!  A tall order indeed.

So with your generosity in heart, my research notes in hand, I head to the mystic East.

Watch here for updates and pictures