Lifestyle
The ‘Gudi’ store for unusual tribal artifacts
By Nishal Lama
Published: October 02 2009
The ‘Gudi’ store for unusual tribal artifacts
Located at K.R. Road, Gudi just serves as a great place for all those art lovers and with those hoping to preserve the ancient art of the country. From metal cravings, bronze sculptors and other forms of beautiful ornaments and vessels.
Started by a theater-person-turn-entrepreneur, Ekbal Ahamed, Gudi is not just the place that one goes to buy these ornaments, but it has, over the years, become more like a Heritage center. Gudi aims to provide rooted art as alternative to a city-centered art that is limited to glitziness. “Life is an art,” says Mr. Shamed. He explains, “I see that a lot of the people these days’ have lost their touch with the root of the country, which is not something that can be found in places like Bangalore. It’s in these places, where the culture still plays a dominating role, and lives amidst them.”
Ahamed added, “The things that we have here, be it the sculptors, the potteries, paintings, flowers or just any other show piece, are all very, very ethnic. Everything we sell solely depicts the Indian society.”
In the past few years, people’s perspective towards art has changed. Today, a lot of the people prefer to get things from abroad, or at least things that depict the culture of other countries. Ahamed questions, “Why is that we fall short in culture? We have a plethora of caste and culture mixed in this country, yet we run behind other countries, countries like China and Japan.” He adds, “At Gudi, one can see things that reflect the Indian society and culture.”
Apart from being a place to buy and sell art objects, Gudi also serves as a center for culture. “We don’t always buy these ornaments from artists, but also give them a platform to exhibit their work.” He adds, “When the things are sold, we give them their share.”
The place, which is not more than six years old, today, has become more like a Heritage center for all the ancient art, and especially the ones that people, the so called cosmopolitan crowd, have forgotten about. At Gudi, one can find some of the most elegant collection of artifacts, pottery, indoor paintings, and beautiful home decorative.
Needless to say, that it didn’t take a lot of time for these eco-friendly forms of art to grab a lot of the people’s attention in the city. “All the things that we sell are plastic-free and synthetic-free, something that suits the need of people.” He adds, “A lot of the people who come here are my regular customers, and most of them show their interests in different forms of art.”
Today, Gudi showcases a wide range of sculptors, ornaments, paintings, which are all brought from states like Assam, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Chhattisgarh. “We get a lot of the paintings and stone work from Orissa, ornaments from Maharashtra, bamboo handicrafts from Assam, sculptors made of Rod Iron from places in Chhattisgarh.”
With the gaining popularity of the place, Ahamed now plans to expand, which, according to him, will also serve as a nice platform for these artists to exhibit their work. “The knowledge that has gone behind a lot of these arts is one thousand years old, some thing that our forefathers have left behind. It definitely needs to be promoted, which primarily is main intention.”
Ekbal Ahamed has been a theater artist, directed and scripted a lot of them. When asked on what made him change his profession, “My love for art,” replies the man. He shares some of his faded memories of his experience, while he was still working as a theater person at Chhattisgarh, some twenty years back. “I got a lot of inspiration seeing a lot of these tribes working on different sculptors, depicting different forms of art, while I was at Chhattisgarh (Madhya Pradesh then) as a theater person. Guess, I got a lot of motivation then,” laughs Ahamed.
