As the first woman IPS officer in South India, Jija Hari Singh was a trailblazer as part of the 1975 cadre, when one of the only other woman in the force was Kiran Bedi who had graduated three years earlier. Singh had her work cut out for her, navigating the challenges of police work while male superiors dominated the scene. When the pressure caught up, a skill she had picked up years prior became her solace – painting. “Kaladharan, a famous Kerala artist, had set up his studio close to the college I was teaching in before joining the force. He would pick anybody he could find as a model; we would sketch their features. It was wonderful, but soon I found that I just preferred to paint,” she recalls, adding, “When I took a year-long break around 1996, just to get away, I used to paint crazily – just paint and paint and paint.” Just as her love for art would lead her to exhibit work all over the world and across India, it gave her the push to start the non-profit Art Mantram in 1999, with her daughter Yumna Hari Singh by her side through it all.
For weeks, the duo has been caught in the chaos of hosting Creative City Bengaluru, a mega arts festival spread across the city’s arts venues covering everything from seminars, live painting events, art competitions for kids, and folk performances. They even held a celebration at DrishyAM, the organisation’s in-the-works arts village. Catching up with them now to learn about their working relationship, Yumna laughs is ‘maybe not the most opportune time,’ while her mother smiles, ‘...it is the best time, right in the middle of things.’ This push and pull, as it is slowly revealed, seems to be what makes their ‘partnership’ of 27 years tick.
Yumna, unlike her mother, does not consider herself much of an artist but is a writer and poet who has held several high-level corporate jobs around the world. When Jija called on her to co-found Art Mantram, she was on a gap year, working with student organisation AIESEC. Jija laughs, saying, “When you have a crazy idea, who can you persuade best? Your 18-year-old daughter!” Her younger daughter, Anantica, despite being the artist in the family was excluded due to an accident of age. “She was just 14 and was crying because she was very keen on joining as a founding trustee but she (as a minor) could not. At 40, she still hasn’t forgiven me,” says Jija.
For Yumna, it was a chance to return her mother’s unconditional support. She chose to leave home at 13 for boarding school and had gotten a scholarship at 16 to the US. “If it was completely up to mom, she would have liked to have me stay at home but she never stood in my way for any opportunity. So being able to support her when she had a dream, for me, became important.” She adds, “Fundamentally, what I shared with her was this vision that art should be accessible to everyone, not kept in ivory towers; and that it had the ability to change not just people’s minds, but make a difference in real crisis scenarios.”
While the initial few years saw Yumna mainly pick up whatever work needed to be done – from writing curatorial notes to framing artworks, artist Svetoslav Roerich’s centenary celebrations in 2004, were the start of her taking on a bigger role. Last year, she went from VP to President of Art Mantram. In a full-circle moment, this week’s festivities saw them return to the estate after 22 years, bringing along Russian, Ukrainian and Indian artists to capture the essence of Roerich and veteran actor Devika Rani’s home in the outskirts of Bengaluru. The artists’ work will be exhibited at Four Seasons till the end of January.
Consistently pulling off events with ‘a lean team’ is no easy task and absolutely not free from conflict, as the duo admits. “In the police, we manage things differently, and I tend to slip into that mode most often. But Yumna is a free bird from the corporate world. Most of the time I give in,” says Jija but Yumna vehemently disagrees with a laugh, saying, “She doesn’t give in at all! It’s like talking to a tidal wave. There’s a reason she’s been so successful in life, and it’s because she has the power of conviction, she’s proved herself right against the views of society. When you start out with a mother like that, there’s only two ways to survive – either you go with the flow or go out of the flow. I’ve done both in various stages of my life.”
However, when these opposites come together, magic happens. Yumna says, “The fact that we’re very different allows us to bring different approaches to the same problem. She sees some solutions, I see some others, and we meet in the middle and execute together.” As the festival concludes tomorrow with a series of city-focussed walks, mom and daughter can finally breathe a sigh of relief – until they make a splash with their next project.