Suitable Boy Vikram Seth explains Absolute bottle painting

Author and poet, Vikram Seth is a reticent man preferring to talk only when he has got a book in the can. When he speaks though he does with such felicity and candor you wish he would speak for longer. Without a doubt what this man spouts will give you pause to pounder.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18's Anuradha SenGupta, Seth explains the Absolute bottle painting campaign and his new book A Suitable Girl, which he is writing 20 years later. Here is an edited transcript. Q: How have you been?
A: Well as you know I have been doing a lot of painting and sculpting. At the moment I am working on my novel. Q: You have been dabbling isn't it?
A: You can call it dabbling but, actually I wouldn’t call it that in the sense that… Q: Are you serious about sculpting?
A: I would say so. I mean you could say, for example. when I was an economist while you are writing poetry you are writing a novel that’s great. Like my parents said at first, 'its good to dabble but then come back to what you really should be doing, get a good job where you get pension and then after a while you can dabble again.' Well they didn't realise that I wasn’t dabbling I was certainly testing my toes in the water. But I am serious about it I was inspired by it, I was obsessed by it.
Similarly in the last 15 years I have been obsessed by Chinese calligraphy. Then after that by painting which added a touch of colour to it and then later by sculpting about 5 years ago, little less than that. That’s when I realized that I wanted to write 'A Suitable Girl' something that I refused to do for 20 years despite the blandishments of various people. At that time at the least convenient time I suddenly got this urge to sculpt. When you get that kind of urge you don't just dabble, you go act it with a kind of stupid obsessiveness. Q: Tell us about the fact that you are painting and you have painted in association? Or this is a collaborative thing or commissioned piece by Absolute isn't it? You don't do too many commissioned bits of work isn't it? You may have done one or two in the past and this is perhaps the third or fourth such project?
A: I suppose. I have done some commission work in music. Arion & the Dolphin: A Libretto was a commissioned work in a sense. But in a sense I had an idea that I could do something, I have written poetry and a narrative before. I like music. So with some element of confidence, I will take it up.  For example, when I was commissioned to write the Libretto for it, I'll do it if I feel I can do it, if I like the composer who is going to be setting it to music and so on.
The history of art whether it is painting or literature or music is repeated commissions. What I did do in this case because I have been practicing art for a long time, I made sure that the inspiration was interesting, the iconic shape of the bottle.
First, the shape was interesting is its own right, it is very simple and not too complex like the coke bottle which itself is wonderful but it is not something that I can't do much to it. Secondly there is a whole tradition of people using the Absolute bottle from Indian artists to Kurt Vonnegut to Hans Hollein – the architect. This has been used in so many different ways it became kind of intriguing challenge to see if I could do something different and infuse something of my own personality and background and enthusiasms into this.
But I made it very clear to them, right from the beginning, that if I didn't find what came out to be interesting or something that made me content or happy or whatever then they will have to accept that I wouldn’t put it out at all and that all deals were off and that will be the end of it.
And they were very nice about that they said look quite frankly we don't want to force anyone into anything. For example I was talking about the shape of the bottle. In the Urdu case what I used a lot of is a blue painting. You can see that what I have used is the roundness of the shoulder of the bottle.