Mihir Srivastava draws naked people. I learnt about his unusual “hobby” when he wrote about it in the magazine he works for, two years ago. I loved the piece. So when I heard about Conversations in the Nude it was obviously on my must-read list.
Mihir Srivastava draws naked people. I learnt about his unusual “hobby” when he wrote about it in the magazine he works for, two years ago. I loved the piece. So when I heard about Conversations in the Nude it was obviously on my must-read list. Srivastava’s passion for sketching “the bodies of live models” bared its fangs around 12 years ago — to kill the boredom of the routine. His subjects could be male or female, Hindu or Muslim, thin or fat, friends or strangers, gay or straight — the lone condition being they should be willing to strip and pose. Given his curious hobby and the reactions (including legal) such a hobby would elicit in a conservative society like ours, the longest chapter in Srivastava’s book is “Why I do it”. He takes pains to point out — thankfully in a good humoured way — that he is not a pervert and that he does not con people to strip to have sex with them. He admits that he occasionally gets attracted to his subjects and sometimes the subjects are ready to pounce on him (he says he was once on the verge of being “gang-raped”!), but he succeeds in being the professional nude sketcher that he is till the end. The only two lapses in this career have been documented. Srivastava claims that of the around 300 people he has asked to pose, a 100 agreed. Statistically it’s a number that makes him want to pat his back. His choice of subjects is intuitive and the sketching “an assertion of self”. His modus operandi is rather simple. He shows his sketch book to prospective subjects and asks in a “soft voice, barely audible: ‘Would you like to pose ’” He writes that “nudity is seen as obscenity” and therefore he has created a private space for public nudity: “Because there is no context of a relationship or the backdrop of intimacy to this interaction in the nude.” His “experiment with truth” has taught him and his subjects that the absence of clothes is no big deal. But not before he had to consult a psychologist friend to discuss his “mental health” and any “perversions he should worry about”. If the subjects are not so easy to come by, Srivastava too is not easy to please. He has a fascination for body hair and refuses to draw people without it. He once returned a young, enthusiastic graphic designer who was posing for him: “I requested her to return when some of the vegetation was back on her bare landscape.” Often Srivastava drops hints about his high-profile subjects and it is difficult as a reader not to try and put two and two together. Like this man, in his 50s, a voracious reader, who has visited 117 countries and paints his hair “green, red and purple”. Or the retired doctor in her mid-80s, who lived alone in a posh south Delhi locality, and asked Srivastava to sketch her. “My husband died 30 years ago. Since then, nobody has looked at me for any reason the way you did today,” she told him. Or the expat whom Srivastava almost gave away, but for his disclaimer at the end of the chapter: “She is not my Facebook friend.” Although the subjects he has showcased in the book are all interesting — a sanyasi he meets at Rishikesh, a Russian who wants to be off sex, a wrestler and his friends who almost “gang-raped” him, or a female friend who calls in other friends to have group sex — the way the chapters unfold is formulaic. One can also see through the hypocrisy of the characters. Also, at times, the writer’s. He gets royally snubbed by the Russian tourist at Rishikesh with — “You too want sex ” Srivastava’s physical description of his subjects gets boring after the first few chapters. The setting, the body type, the shadow play and then detailed description of the personals. Sometimes the philosophising on why he sketches nudes to his subjects is almost unbearable. Some chapters such as “The Heartbreak” have little point. The writer has been told by his friends that his persuasive skills are superior to his sketching skills. If I may add, Srivastava’s sketching skills are superior to his writing skills. The fantastic layout of the book, including the stylistic font, is a pleasure — if only the editors had remembered to run a spell check (“straight-forward portrayel”, page 129, for example) and proof-read the draft for typos. If I hadn’t read the piece that Srivastava wrote for his magazine, I would have surely enjoyed the book more. But those of you who didn’t, please do buy the book — if not for the prose, then for Srivastava’s sketches. He is good.
