Notes from a conversation with Milan
The domain of artifactual literacy is of growing interest. It brings together material culture and literacy. The ‘stuff’ of culture is understood as a valid and powerful form of meaning-making. Milan Khanolkar, a Goan artist opens up the notion of a text as something beyond the printed and even spoken word. It gives us an insight into how story-making can be multimodal and how texts can be woven in diverse ways.
Bookworm has published her children’s book, Bindi Su. Milan has also worked on documenting stories from the rich oral tradition of certain Konkani speaking coastal communities.
Even from childhood, I was fascinated by dolls – not the dolls that you could buy from the market but the ones that I could make myself. I wanted to make my own creations.
I used to collect all the small, small bits of brightly coloured cloth and from the tailor’s waste pieces I would make dolls. Mostly I made just dolls’ heads and even though everyone teased me I still wanted to make my dolls in my own way.
I did not play with the dolls but it was the making process that was very important to me. Now looking back I think it was like the mythological story of Parvati making Ganapati from the earth of her own body without the help of any male. In the story of Parvati, it was that same figure of Ganapati who stood guard while she was taking a bath. I liked the idea that she made the image from her own body without any help from anyone and I too wanted to make my dolls without going to the market or depending on anyone else.
I would make them in my own way by wrapping the cloth around a sharp stick or using the cloth itself to make a body. I would make the face and give my dolls eyes and other features. I mostly made female figures. There was a lot of decoration and I was fascinated by the way that women made up their faces. It was only much later as an adult that sometimes I would consciously add a male figure to create a family.
The desire to make my own dolls was very strong in me. I felt a kind of freedom that even if my dolls were lost or broken I could make them again. I was not dependent on anyone. I think that my dolls were always a creation of my own self-image.
My relationship with my dolls was not with one particular doll that I stuck to. It was never like that and I always felt ready to move forward to make another doll. As an adult, I still have the same feeling and that gives me courage because I know that what is inside is a wealth that will never be lost. It is a continuous, flowing thing that will be with me all my life until I die. I have a feeling of trust that I will never run out of ideas or materials to make again. Outside there may be a fear that this material or that can vanish because it is out of fashion or there is a scarcity but for me finding the material is not a worry; even if someone takes away the material no one can take away the wealth that I feel inside me. The dolls inside me are always ready to come out. Ready-made things don’t give you the feeling of really making something but with my dolls, it is for me giving birth. They come one after another.
When I was a child there was a wandering doll-maker who would come to my village. He would travel from house to house and he used to come to my grandmother’s house. He used to sing and tell stories in his own dialect of Thaka but he was also like a postman who carried messages from village to village. He would bring news to my grandmother from her family’s house in another village. He had a doll or a puppet called Thaki. She was a strong woman who had her own mind and had a very confident look. She always had big eyes but they were not frightening. I loved those eyes and her colour and her chiselled woodenness. The doll-maker or the bauhulekar would play with her to make her move her head from side to side and she would dance with her hands. I never felt that I wanted to play with Thaki because she belonged to the bauhulekar. I saw that Thaki could be taken anywhere and that bauhulekar could dress her up and then she would talk and dance. Much later I went to the museum in the Rajah’s palace in Sawantwadi and found Thaki there. Her clothes had changed but the face was the same as I remembered. I liked her yellow wooden face with its sharp features. There was always a fascinating, haunting expression on her face that seemed to follow me wherever I went. When I was a child the dolls were not made to sell or exhibit but only to perform and to help the bauhulekar to sing and to tell his stories. At that time the bauhulekar both made his own dolls and played with them.
My own dolls had no names but for me there was a very intense feeling about them and the dolls were alive. When I was a little older I used to cut out dolls from paper and dress them in saris as I saw the women around me do. These were not exactly dolls and I did not have the same connection with them but still, I enjoyed making and dressing them. When I was at High School I left that world and I did not make any more dolls.
It was only when I went to Art College that I returned to making dolls. I made for the craft mela when we were free to make what we wanted. It was very different from making a painting because the materials were in my hand and I had an intense feeling that I wanted to create something that was not flat like a picture but three dimensional. I never think consciously about the process of making. I have a feeling of a presence – and know the movement inside me – like a child that is inside the mother’s body but at the beginning, I don’t know what shape they will take. It is always a surprise for me to see their form and expression. I also make animals and birds to accompany the dolls – they seem to take shape from my imagination and are not like birds from the outer world. I am watching them as they come from inside to outside but in coming out they take me back to my inner world. It is a continuous process of travelling in and out.
I don’t have a dialogue with my creations in words but sometimes I smile at their mischief and wait for them to choose what they want to be and how they want to be in this world. I think, “You decide where you want to be and which corner of my house you want to occupy. Don’t follow me, you are free!”
There are one or two particular dolls that represent for me a divine energy and I do change their places – that place becomes like an altar but it is a moving, mobile altar. Now I call it a spirit-doll and she has her own world. I don’t want to put them in a doll’s house filled with things of an everyday world because I feel dolls should have their own space.
THAKI, THE BAUHULEKAR’S PUPPET AS SEEN IN THE MUSEUM IN THE RAJAH’S PALACE IN SAWANTWADI
My dolls can represent different parts of me and even sides of me or an energy that I don’t show. In a doll, I can represent all sides of myself. I don’t decorate myself like the shininess of some of my dolls but I like to express that side through the doll. I see these different sides represent even parts that I might have repressed – there is sometimes a kind of wildness which is inside me but I don’t show it except through my dolls. I see my qualities dressed in the doll.
At college, I made dolls from different materials such as clay but these ceramic dolls were not classical and were more like dolls made by local craftsmen. The dolls were fat and had large features with big eyes and big mouths. I would use and mix different materials and textures including plastic bottles and dried fruit.
In some ways, my dolls are like the characters of a book. In my book “Bindi Su” the main character is a red car. The character arrives in my imagination and tells me what she wants. The red car has her own expression and her own character – the lights became her eyes; she has a nose and a mouth. She uses all her senses to interact with the world. Bindi Su meets different characters and last she meets a long snake that is crossing the road. The snake is so long that it seems to have no end. In that book, I leave the ending open and ask the reader to finish the story.
Dolls also have an openness that can be made into different stories! There is not one ending. Sometimes when I move my dolls and put them here or there it is in the shuffling that two dolls come together accidentally. Then by chance, they meet and so sometimes make another story.
When a person sees my dolls and makes his or her own connection I think they see something about themselves in the doll. They may interpret the doll in their own way which many times may be different from my experience or my point of view. I like it when other people share their own connections with my creations because I think a doll gives us multiple ways of seeing. Another person will make their own story and then I feel my dolls can grow.
Books need other people to edit and print but with my dolls, there is no third person. The making of the doll is only in my hand.
ILLUSTRATION BY ALIA SINHA MAINLY BASED ON IMAGES OF MILAN’S DOLLS
The dolls stay around me in my house and visitors come and see and I enjoy sharing the dolls in the place where they are. If someone connects to the doll I feel, “You can take it !” I can sometimes give them away but I cannot make dolls to order or make a business of it. I have made different kinds of dolls but the ones in my house I have a special relationship with and I can’t sell them but I might exchange them for something that someone else has made or treasures. With some dolls, I need time with them before I can part with them.
A doll has all kinds of qualities – they laugh and joke and giggle at you but they can also show feelings that come from deep down. A doll has a capacity to see very dark things and from there can also see very light things; a doll connects the underworld and the heavens. Noting makes them frightened! For us, if we experience dark things we often remain there and we will never come out of it but a doll can hold these opposite worlds of dark and light and that for me is a divine energy. It is an energy that can hold all these opposites. This capacity to deal with dark forces unites certain kinds of dolls all over the world.
There is another kind of doll that brings emptiness. With the Barbie doll, for example, it is as though you are feeding a princess because whatever you give her is not enough. Barbie is all-consuming – she sucks life from us. She is desirable but a symbol of consumerism and a kind of materialism. The material is not a bad thing in itself, we are created from matter and we create things from matter but the inner worlds and the outer worlds need to come together in the making of things.
James Hillman writes, “The great mother is not merely a stone statue in a museum…she is that consciousness that connects all psychic events to material ones, placing the images of the soul in the service of physical tangibilities.” [i]
[i] (Hillman J. 1979. The Dream and the Underworld. Harper Perennial . p. 69.)