VEGETABLE CUTTING, AND MORE...

A Bharatnatyam dancer stands as the symbol of balance, her tiny feet together. The symmetrical folds of her saree, wrapped carefully around, hang tautly, anticipating movement. Her hands, poised for performance take position, bangled in red and green. Her eyes gaze out from a round face, flawlessly wheatish in complexion, towards the audience. A flaming tilak matches her lips. Her hair is perfectly combed, held together by a string of white flowers, which style and adorn. Her feet and hands are made of carrot; her saree of cabbage, especially tender where it drapes her shoulder; the bangles of multihued chillies; the white of her eyes of onion, the black of brinjal; the tilak and lips of red chilly; the hair of more brinjal; the flowers of cauliflower; and the face, well, of potato. Her centre of gravity is a knitting pin. A twinkle alights in 80 year old Indu Shedde's eyes when she talks of art. Applauded variously for her vegetable sculptures, she uses her kitchenware to excel – like herself or like a Bharatnatyam dancer – in extracting joy from the mundane and the transient.

This is how she remembers her moment of discovery in 1960, accentuated by her daughters' elucidations:

"When working in the kitchen, the shapes and colours of different vegetables strike me – the karela being rough… the baingan being smooth…" So one day she experimented with an onion. "Its inherent circles makes me think of a flower!" A single onion cut into two – made two flowers… "And dipping one in haldi water makes it yellow…" Add green onion leaves – and you have a stem!



"I started translating everything into vegetables," Shedde recounts. So arose more flowers, a peacock, fishes, a woman, a family, Santa Claus… and over 200 uniquely different sculptures. The minute detailing on Bharatnatyam and Manipuri dancers to bring out each style led famed dancer Rukmini Devi to remark: "You've given the Bharatnatyam dancer South Indian features!" Another challenge was bringing to life a Boeing via vegetable (read "doodhi") to match an Air India Maharaja similarly conceived. Then post royalty, she produced a hippie – replete with long hair and guitar. Also, the divine intervened. "The lord guided me to do it!" is how she remembers creating Krishna out of brinjal, cabbage leaves, cauliflower, Kari patta and carrot. Adter winning flower shows like those thrown by the Friends Of Trees, Fruit And Flower continuously, she stopped competing because it got embarrassing. Her exhibitions led her through regular displays in Span, Eve's Weekly. Dharmyug and Manorama and hotels like the Taj Mahal and Centaur – to finally representing India at the World Vegetarian Congress in the US. "Here the Japanese saw my sculptures and said – being nature lovers, they'd never realized nature could be used such." The Americans in turn, asked her to teach a long list of the country's top chefs this art.
But Shedde refused and returned. "I wanted to be there for my two daughters," explains the woman who chiselled her potential only after 10 pm, when her children were asleep. Also, being self taught herself, she doesn't believe art can be transferred so easily: "I can show them how to do it – but it's all about ideas… which come from within." Shedde, who grew up in Dharwad, which gave rise to artists of the stature of Bhimsen Joshi, was since childhood involved with one art form or the other. She's moved on now, and very successfully, to paper mache sculptures and bags. "They last, unlike vegetables which wither. Also I'm too old to carve details in vegetables." Can paper mache capture the fleeting moment of a dancer's joy though? Or does age despise transience?