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MAN OF THE YEAR
GAUTAM RAJADYAKSHA
The Renaissance Man
Gerald A. de Souza profiles the legendary artist

Man of The Year

Bombay's Hughes Road, a stone's throw from what was once the Royal Opera House, is famous of the row of emporia, that lines its pavement, displaying the most splendid jewelry. A fine second storey balconied apartment, overlooking this road, is the setting for an even more precious gem of the first water: Gautam Rajadyaksha, known to the world at large as a photojournalist par excellence and the producer of 'Faces', a landmark anthology of film star portraits. In words and pictures, the book covers several generations, starting from Durga Khote and Shobhana Samarth ending with the young ones like Aishwarya Rai and Akshay Khanna.

To reach Gautam's home, one goes up an old wooden staircase, maintained in pristine condition. The stucco side-walls are lined by what looks like stylized billboards of the operatic musical dramas of the 19th century Italian composers, Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. One is then admitted into a large hall, dominated by a large bookcase, devoid of distracting ornamentation, and unostentatiously but comfortably furnished.

Its only decoration is a few stark impressionistic portraits. The ambience is a reflection that one's host is an aesthete, who perfectly comprehends the cardinal artistic principle that function dictates form. One realizes that he is not just an eminent photojournalist, but an embodiment of the classic definition of the renaissance man, as one whose intellectual interests and achievements are wide ranging; and especially one whose talents encompass both the arts and the sciences. The word 'renaissance' itself relates to the humanistic revival of classical art, literature and learning that originated in Italy in the 14th century and later spread throughout Europe. It gave a new definition to a truly cultured person as one who is able to appreciate or engage in all the arts, painting, sculpture, literature, music and drama with the facility with which a healthy person uses and delights in all his five senses.

Famed singer Asha Bhonsle inaugurates Gautam's Exhibition - Chehere

A scion of a Gaud Saraswat Brahmin family with spiritual links to the Mangeshi temple in Goa, Gautam Rajadyaksha's illustrious lineage provided the rough gemstone from which he was cut. He was honed to perfection, in the uncompromising discipline of Jesuit schools and colleges for seventeen years. He was polished to multifaceted brilliance for an almost equivalent period as a member of the renowned Lintas advertising team, which probably represented the highest concentration of creative talents ever gathered under one roof in Bombay. Thereafter, he stepped out to freelance and shine in his own coruscating radiance.

Gautam was born in Bombay in the year 1950 into a family which had been mainly in the Civil Services or in the professions. His grandfather, Sakharam, had been the Chief PWD Officer under whom the Gateway of India, the Brabourne Stadium and the Royal Institute of Sciences were built between the years 1910 and 1925. His eldest son, Ganpati, Gautam's uncle, was the Justice of the Bombay High Court and also the person first appointed to the Press Commission under Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 1951. Gautam's father, Dattaram, was one of the pioneering sugar technologists way back in 1936. He went to places, like Kolhapur, which were really backward then and helped to establish, what is today the sugar kingdom.

Gautam poses with his works in the background

An only child, Gautam lost his parents at a young age and was brought up by his aunt and her husband, Dr. S.R. Joglekar, FRCS, a very prominent practitioner at the time of Dr. Cooper and Dr. Mulgaonkar, princes of medicine in the earlier part of the century. They gave the boy a very liberal upbringing and broad-minded education first in St.Xaviers High School and later in St. Xaviers College .During the summer and Divali holidays, reading was much encouraged. Photography was a hobby the entire family took very seriously. Gautam was given a camera and told to shoot his friends. There was no television to watch then, but he was a Hollywood buff and saw a lot of films in his younger years, specially those of Liz Taylor, Greta Garbo and Lana Turner, which impressed upon him the importance of photography as a good medium of portraiture.

Although he graduated in chemistry and microbiology in 1971 and continued in St. Xavier's college to teach chemistry for another two years, an inborn predilection for the arts inspired in him an interest to take up a course in Advertising and Public Relations. He did rather well and was invited, in 1972, by Gerson Da Cunha to join as a Management Trainee in Lintas, then a nascent agency that had just cut its umbilical cord from Hindustan Lever .

The culture of Lintas, which was like a university, helped every one to develop their special interests. There were so many painters, poets and writers and all were encouraged. In fact, the agency chief, Alyque Padamsee would exhort managers to find a hobby, to pursue a craft, to have at least one or two extra interests in life in order to expand and mature the mind. A brilliant copywriter, like Cozzie Rosario was also an adept mathematician and philosopher. Alyque and Gerson were already renowned for their work in the theatre. Gerson was, in addition, also a man with great social causes, who eventually went into UNICEF. Lintas became the launching pad for many talented persons, like Shyam Benegal, who was a Films' Chief and Katrak who later became the head of several agencies. If Lintas had been another cut and dried advertising agency, which asked one to do his work and that was it, and whatever one did in private life was of no official concern, the team members would not have grown to their full potential. Gautam was fortunate to be at the right time, with the right people, and with the right kind of encouragement to develop a wide range of interests. He remained in that nurturing environment for 15 long years until 1987.

Gautam with cousin Shoba De- columnist and Author

In 1974, Gautam had been given the charge of the Photo Services Department, which gave him a good vantage point from which he could watch at work some of the great photographers of that time, like Jehangir Gazdar, Vilas Bhende, Adrian Steven, N.T Royan and Mitter Bedi. This exposure had rekindled the urge to try photography on a small scale and, in the year 1978, Gautam had saved up and spent two months salary to buy a professional camera.

Being the head of the department, it would have been very easy for him to ask any of the models, male or female, to come over a week-end or on a Sunday to be photographed, but he never did, feeling that it would be taking advantage of his position. He would shoot friends like Shabana Azmi, who had been in college with him. There were others like Tina Munim and Jackie Shroff, who had by that time already got into films. They had learnt that he was doing photography and insisted on his shooting them as it would be of some use to them. Covenanted managers in Lintas, as was Gautam, were not expected to have an alternative source of income within the same field of interest. So he never charged money for his pictures and was fortunate also in being able to show them to colleagues like Gerson Da Cunha, Alyque Padamsee, Cossie Rosario or Mubi Ismail, who were the great creative stalwarts of Lintas. Side by side with his work, his journey into serious photography had slowly started.

Meanwhile, his cousin, Shobha De had started a magazine of her own called 'Celebrity'. Gautam used to write for it as well as for 'Society' . Since he was employed in Lintas and it was not possible for him to get professional photographers to accompany him to the interviews, he began to take pictures only to illustrate his articles. He really wanted to write but -as he candidly puts it - no one wanted his writings as much as they wanted his pictures.

Gautam with film star Madhuri Dixit

By 1983, he was contributing to the 'Illustrated Weekly', 'Filmfare' and 'Stardust'. He was shooting a lot of filmstars and even a lot of non filmstar personalites and celebrities. His name was being circulated around. His pictures were very different from the run of the mill, in the sense that they were more personality than glamour based and did not adhere to any set rules of glamour or photojournalism. They were honest to goodness pictures of people talking, people in their home-clothes that brought a feeling of freshness and candour into the scenes, that viewers began to like.

All the while, he had been doing exceedingly well in Lintas and had been actively involved in launching three of Lever's most important products, like Liril with girl ( Karen Lunel) in the waterfall , and also 'Close Up' toothpaste, which is one of their flagship brands and 'Fair & Lovely'; not to mention the Lalitaji, 'the strident woman' campaign for 'Surf' .But simultaneously, a lot of people within the film industry and many editors had begun complaining that it was difficult for them to get him as he was only available on Saturdays or Sundays; and sometimes not even on Saturdays, because if there was a major campaign in the offing, he couldn't free himself. Though he faced a very bright career in Lintas, photojournalism was becoming more than a week-end hobby for him with extremely interesting and invigorating experiences. All he had to do was to go out for two or three hours, make his contact, do his pictures, write his article and then he could move on to something else. Freedom to do what he really wanted to do spurred him on and the encouragement of so many editors and people in the film industry gave him great impetus. He was enjoying his avocation even more so because he was meeting people and doing new things, without the kind of adminstrative tedium and responsibilities, which were increasing by the day in Lintas.

In 1987, he was offered the post of a Creative Director amongst the four divisions that Lintas had. He realized that new post meant a very administration-oriented job apart from being creatively very responsible and taking it would possibly restrict what he wanted to do, particularly what really gave him joy. He found himself at the cross-roads. He told himself that he ought to take the leap before he turned 40, an age when inertia usually sets in, or else it would be very difficult for him to change. So he plucked up courage and sent in his resignation. It was not accepted so easily at first, but he reasoned it out . Lintas finally let him go, with the door to return, if he wished, kept open. From then on, he didn't look back. His photography of filmstars and celebrities continued, but the 'funniest and nicest thing' that happened, even as a freelancer he was swamped by a host of advertising campaigns, many of them from Lintas itself for 'Fair & Lovely again, but also from Hindustan Thompson Associates for Rexona soap and many of the old campaigns, he had supervised or actually done while in service. Lux too, because it was film-star based and since he knew them all, they also felt very comfortable doing it with him. He did Sunsilk and Organics and other products which were cosmetic or beauty-oriented because, by then, he had become noted more for his face- pictures and portraits.

Gautam with Hollywood hero Sanjay Dutt in Goa 

He also became an editor of a Marathi fornightly called 'Chanderi' Through this medium, he became a rather well-known writer as well as a photojournalist, in Goa and other places like Belgaum, While his contributions to other magazines continued, his photojournalistic work broadened to include non-film personalities like industrialists,, painters, poets, writers and musicians. His clientele now included the music recording companies like HMV, Polygram or Polydor, as it was then called, who asked him to do pictures for album covers of artists, including Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. Not only did he shoot them, but they virtually adopted him as a member of their family!

Side by side, Gautam's innate love of music and drama, and interactions with its practitioners, also lured him into a love-affair with another more intense form of theatrical performance in which a dramatic text is set entirely to music, namely, grand opera ; and not merely as an enthusiastic aficionado with an impressive collection of records of the genre, but as a serious student, critic and historian. In fact, one of the future assignments, he has set for himself is to write a treatise on certain unknown periods of opera, especially from 1915 to 1945, when many Italian composers like Ricardo Zandonai, Giordano and Mascagni wrote great works but suffered a post-war eclipse due to the stigma of Fascism. Many are not aware that Mussolini, unlike Hitler, did try to influence the music of his country. Gautam has made it his mission to delve into these nuggets and bring them to the attention of lovers of music in order to dispel the impression that Puccini was really the last of the composers of grand opera.

This inquiry into musical history also sparked off a wider interest in history at large, particularly of the events in Europe from 1850-1950, the momentous hundred-year period, beginning with what has come to be known as the Age of Enlightenment or Reason and going beyond it to straddle both the first and second World Wars. 'The Enlightenment' was a name or label that came into being in the late nineteenth century, affixed to a new paradigm, a cluster of ideas and attitudes that swept away the last vestiges of medieval mind-sets and scholastic clerical dominance of philosophy. The new way of thinking had a profoundly liberating effect on literature as well as the arts. It set in place in Western culture a new dominant mode that was to persist into the future: the free play of critical and constructive reason, the employment of available knowledge in the humanistic search for a better society, better behaviour, greater happiness on earth, a better understanding of what men were capable of, and what can and should be done with them Its greatest achievement, perhaps, was the universal dissemination of the concepts of Democracy, Republicanism and the Charter of Human Rights, including the emancipation of women, but in the process it also engendered the strident anti-imperialistic doctrines and conflicting ideologies, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, its concomittant element of ultra-nationalism and struggle for a New World Order, which triggered the World Wars.

In 1991, Gautam wrote a film script which was made into a Hindi film, "Bekhudi", which introduced the charming young girl called Kajol. Two years later he did a film, called "Anjam", actually written for Madhuri Dixit, which showcased the talent of Madhuri and Shah Rukh Khan for the first time. Then in 1997, he brought out his magnum opus 'Faces'.

Gautam had often wondered which was the best way to photograph the stars - to catch a fragment of their real selves as he perceived them, or shoot the masks that reflected their screen images. He was inspired by the off-beat portraits of famous personalities created by Beaton or Avedon, Penn or Snowdon and, of course, Henri Cartier-Bresson. While these were infinitely more interesting, glamorous pictures were what the magazines demanded and he sorrowfully had to shoot more of the high gloss posed pictures than the candid, unguarded ones. In a similar manner, while the realism of colour had its charms, his personal preference, like Cartier-Bresson has been for black and white because it offered starkness and drama. In black and white, the colours are stripped and what remains is the pure essence of a portrait study - a face bathed in light.

The book, 'Faces,' is an abstract of Gautam's own work which has an almost equal representation of colour as well as black and white pictures and a decided preference to portraits of the stars 'sans powder and poses' rather than the more familiar 'cute and sugar coated' ones. Its production was a labour of love and a particularly enriching one at that, because it was putting together what he really wanted to show by way of pictures he had taken over the years and succinct personal recollections of anecdotes, quotes, incidents and events , all in a single presentation.. It was no wonder that this fabulous collection of Indian film personality portraits has been described in reviews as 'the ultimate expression of emotions'. Its publication was followed by several exhibitions abroad , including in Los Angeles and Birmigham.. The first retrospective exhibition entitled 'Chehre' (Faces) was held in Pune during the week eding November 21st. A similar one is slated to be held in Goa towards the end of December 2000.

Excerpts from an interview with
Gautam Rajadyaksha

Whether the Gaud Saraswats came from Gaur in Bengal or the banks of the Saraswati river in Northern India, the fact is that as a community they have always evinced a strong predilection for the arts. To what extent , do you owe your own talents and tendencies to this heritage?

I think basically your innate abilities have to be there in your own genes. I think those genes are of people from the Konkan coast, but this predilection for the arts is inherent in Saraswats as a whole. They have always excelled in or have always shown a kind of leaning towards some art form or the other. Like my aunt, for example, she was an extremely fine sitar player She was in the G.D.R engaged in fine painting. She had done a five-year course and was a silver medalist over there. Whether in painting, music, writing or cartooning or whatever, I think my family was art oriented in different spheres. Personally too, whenever I went abroad , I didn't go to do any shopping or to visit discotheques or any gambling casinos, I spent my time mostly in art galleries - I was very close to the impressionist painters - and in historical places, because history was what I was reading, particularly the decline and fall of the Hapsburgs, the Romanovs and about the house of Windsor. .

But I think that the Saraswats are also serious-minded. They will make sure that they've got their jobs and their security. Still money is only incidental. You acquire it in passing, as it were, you never bend after or chase it. .This is the very distinguishing feature of people who come with this type of culture. And really its quite true in my case too. I've earned a good name and gained recognition for my profession, but I really don't think I have made too much money. Yet I'm very happy. I've got my books. I've my music, I've got my opera, I've very good friends, and I am on my own.

You couldn't have got this far unless somewhere down the line you had acquired the habit of perfection and the pursuit of excellence? How much of these traits, do you owe to your Jesuit educational background?

To a large extent! I have high respect for the Jesuits, their entire community and their formation. Because of their very selfless lives, the Jesuits themselves are completely devoted to the field of education. They took you very quietly and very correctly towards the right path of excelling yourself. In respect of Science, Technology and the Arts or whatever, the Jesuits brought in a grid of how to proceed. There was a systematic approach to everything.

The habit of perfection is like grammar or mathematics. Unless your grammar is correct your sentences are never going to be right. If your mathematics is not right you are never going to be able to calculate. So I think whether its photography or whatever you do your technique and your sense of what constitutes excellence, has to be there. Otherwise you can never be satisfied with what you do or what you produce and even if people appreciate it, you would know within yourself that it was a compromise.

I cannot tell you the number of fathers, who have been intimate with me. Fr. Brito and Fr. Miranda were absolutely wonderful .In fact to an extent Fr. Miranda had the same kind of thought processes that my uncle, Dr. Joglekar had. He was, incidentally, the surgeon of the Daughters of the Cross and the Jesuits and their doctor as well. Fr. Fews for example he used to be our English teacher, and Fr.. Fritz in the 10th and 11th the most formative years. If one excelled in English, at that time, it was only because of these two people. Fr. Fews, would say express yourselves, improve your thoughts. Right! Fr Fritz was a perfectionist but also a pragmatist. He used to say you should not forget that you are answering a paper in which they really want to know how much you know, style and beauty of your language, you can reserve for your compositions. You got a lot of balance. Then one learnt even more in college, where we had lecturers like Fr. Mesquita, Fr. Fuster and, of course, in college one was even more mature to be able to benefit from their guidance.

On the whole, I think a mixture of a basic home culture and the right educational background, not to mention the proper kind of atmosphere my first and only working environment, that was the advertising agency, all helped me to shape up, to instill in me the desire for excellence. Then if you had an interest in photography, writing or even in music, you could use it to your own advantage and even to your benefit and joy.

How would you define excellence in photojournalism?

Photojournalism actually is of many kinds. There are many people who do extremely good pieces in Parry Match or in Vogue. It does not necessarily mean that you either have to shoot the war or be there at a particular rally or be there where there is a certain kind of action or where some propaganda is going on. Cartier-Bresson is one such pre-eminent practitioner.. He defines an excellent photojournalist as someone who actually appears at that crucial moment and melts into the background. I really do not belong to that school. I had started out by illustrating my articles as a result of which I was shooting photographs that were sync with them. If they were talking about their music collection or their photographs like Smita Patil did, then I was photographing her showing me her pictures. They were a-slice-of-life kind of pictures.

Photojurnalism is also of various calibres and I opted more for the personalities. I never wrote about their scandals, I wasn't interested in their private life. My aim was to get the viewers to see the other side of every famous personality. . Parveen Babi, for instance, was talking about Dickens and about Oscar Wilde and she just said that when she was doing her M.A.she hated Dickens, but now that she picked up Pickwick Papers and Great Expectations, what a joy it was to read them, and I said that it was so because now she was not studying or appearing for an exam. Similarly Smita talked about her passion for photography and Hema Malini talked about a very important thing. She said that Bharat Natyam was a language. When I asked why is was not getting so popular and why it was not becoming international., she said the reason was that it was telling the same old stories. And just as one does not repeat Shakespeare or Chaucer all the time, but writes English in a modern idiom, she said the best thing would be to do ballets of more modern and contemporary subjects using the language of Bharat Natyam. That was a very dramatic and very thought-provoking statement. Others talked about how good they were in food, cuisine, how they loved travel, or what they loved to read and what kind of music they liked. So in every which way my photojournalism was tapping their other side. The relaxed interactive atmosphere got me far closer to understanding them and to capturing the special moment when the visual expression brought out the most interest aspects of their personality..

Of course when you become a full fledged professional photographer, and shoot a lot for the magazines, you also have to deliver what they want, which is usually certain amount of glamour and certain amount of pizzaz, but then , having been brought up in the very highly cultured and trained background of the Alyque's and Gerson's of the world, you always saw to it that a photograph was not just a pretty picture but also to a large extent a story telling one. It should reveal as much of the person as it reveals of the attractive power. I had learnt a lot about the importance of good colour combinations, light and texture, proper and most dramatic way of lighting, which was a little missing when I had taken photography up in the early eighties. But thereafter I never really looked back and analyzed anything. The whole force of life, of music, reading and writing took over me to such an extent that I continued doing my work well up to the time my book was being published. The response I got from the book from journalists from the north to south and the number of people who came to me who wanted to feature it made me realize that they had been noticing my pictures all those days. I never really thought about or bothered to find out whether other journalists had really liked any of my pictures, I had just continued doing my work and that state of anaesthesia was the best. I still do not try to find out others' reactions. I just love doing my best.

About your decision to leave Lintas at the age of 36, just when your career was about to peak, wasn't it a huge gamble ?"

It had taken me a good seven years to actually take the leap, it wasn't actually overnight. I had jumped from one fast moving train to another of the same velocity as a result of which I didn't stumble or fall .I had enough offers and enough experience about what I proposed to do and I knew I could literally jump from one career to the other without feeling the jolt, and the momentum would carry it all. Appreciation and acceptance matters to every artist, but if one got admiration as well one gained a lot of courage. I think it was also a matter of grasping the moment of luck and chance. I wouldn't call it a gamble because I wasn't really taking a risk. I had waited long enough for me to be completely sure that whether I continued at Lintas or ventured outside, I would still be mentally as well as time-wise fully occupied.

What is your conception of beauty?

The question deserves a very trite or very profound answer! But let me attempt an honest one. Beauty is a quality of appearance, which appeals both to the senses and the mind through its symmetry or harmony of form. In its highest manifestation, it arouses a strong feeling of loveliness and sublime contemplative delight.

Were you satisfied with the response to your recent exhibition in Pune?

s I was overwhelmed, not so much by the flattering of the event in the media - particularly on television newcasts - but by the widespread public interest in photography, the large number of people who attended and spontaneous appreciation with which the retrospective of my own work over the last two decades was viewed. I am now looking forward to the first exhibition in Goa with a similar feeling of excitement and anticipation.

In what sense is Goa so special to you?

One can't help feeling amazed and exhilarated by the fact that this tiny emerald state, which constitutes a miniscule 0.19 per cent of the population of India, has contributed such an overwhelming superabundance to its artistic achievements, in painting, literature, drama, photography, you name it, but especially in the field of music, which I love dearly. I have grown up with the music of Kesarbai Kerkar, who used to inspire and regale us year after year for all of ten days of the Ganapati festival at Girgaum, and the singing of Kishori Amonkar and Jyotsna Bhole, not to forget the Mangeshkar sisters, whose voices spanning the entire gamut of musical forms from bhajans to Hindi pop one can hear wherever one travels through the Indian diaspora from Australia to Canada.

How often do you visit Goa?

Goa is very special to me. Our temple is Mangeshi in Ponda.. When I was a child I was taken there. I don't remember very much that particular visit. But in 1981-82, I did a reconnaissance for a particular shoot for Lintas and that time my cousin, Shoba De, said that if was going all the way to Goa, then I must make it a point to visit the Mangeshi temple, for after all it was our temple. Ever since then every year or alternate year, whenever I visit Goa, I do make it a point to visit the temple and it gives me a tremendous feeling.

Gerald A De Souza

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