Sujata Bajaj : Ganapati
Jeane-Claude Carriere
The Lord of Beginnings, Ganapati is himself ananta, beyond time, and arist Sujata Bajaj's fascination with him is - like the deity - abiding. As his scribe, she has painted, etched and sculpted him for decades, yielding an artistic abundance that is happily contradistinct with her early life, primed for Gandhian austerity. This book offers a selection from her works on Ganapati, which, though profuse, are a genre apart from what she is commonly known for. This book is liberally sprinkled with interesting material on Ganapati found in ancient texts, in folklore and in modern scholarship. These 'snippets' are meant only as a complement to the art works, which stand independent of them. The name Ganapati (used in southern India) is interchangeable with Ganesha, which is the common form of addressing the deity in northern India.
Jean-Claude Carrière is a French novelist, screenwriter, actor, Academy Award and Oscar honoree. Alumnus of the cole normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, he was president of La Fémis, the French state film school and a frequent collaborator with the French filmmaker Luis Buñuel. He also worked with Peter Brooks on the screenplay of the film and theatre versions of the Mahabharata.