Subjective Impressions in Palpasa Café

            Drishya is the protagonist as well as the narrator of the novel. So, naturally his action and ideals have dominated the plot of the novel. His artistic creations are also affected by his ideals.

Drishya is a self declared aesthete, as he says, “If I believe in any ism, it’s aestheticism” (Wagle 2008:80). Therefore, the practice of subjective impressions, which is an indispensable idea of aestheticism, is expected in his manners.

As hoped by the reader, Drishya paints his pictures according to the impressions of objects or people around him. He tries to incorporate his personal inspirations of things. He has his own style of using colours, shade and light. He doesn’t paint an object as it is. Therefore he paints the Chandragiri Hills “orange” (Wagle 2008:46) instead of using the usual green colour for it.

            After Palpasa’s death, Drishya doesn’t see any difference between blood and vermillion. He is intoxicated with bloody impressions. So, he uses colour as his “weapon” to fight against his opposite forces. He also mixes the colours according to “the mood” (Wagle 2008:221).

            After the first meeting with Palpasa in Goa, Drishya once accidently reaches Palpasa’s house in Kathmandu. At first, he doesn’t know who the house owner is. He is there in search of a book about painting. He likes the structure and decoration of the house and its garden very much. He especially likes the Buddha statue in the garden. He thinks “…Artists live on a higher plane. They create a separate world, another reality. They conjure characters from their minds” (Wagle 2008:49). His idea is similar to that of Walter Pater about an artistic genius. For Pater, the artistic genius has the ability of “conceiving humanity in a new and striking way” (Pater 1873:213). A person who has this genius can create a world happier than the mean world we are living in. He or she can select, change or modify the images according to his or her own imaginative power.

Drishya appreciates the Buddha idol’s eyes, and imagines himself creating the same art. Certainly his present mood would affect his creation of art. He is in illusion, so he admits that the eyes of the Buddha idol would be “crowded with illusions” (Wagle 2008:49).

            When Kapil, Drishya’s friend, asks the meaning of his painting ‘Langtang 1995’, at a get together party, Drishya suggests him to “go beyond what’s represented and try to feel the mood” (Wagle 2008:67), i.e. to be subjective. His painting doesn’t represent the real object Langtang, but it has captured just ‘the mood of 95’. Mood is related to mind. It is not always the same. It gets changed in due course of time.

             Drishya frequently admits, many times in course of his narration, that his art is impressionistic. Drishya has been very much impressed by his village surroundings. He says he has learnt different skills of his art from natural things like hills, mustard fields, wind, water, etc.

After Palpasa’s death, Drishya goes to Palpasa’s house to meet her grandmother. There, he again sees the same idol of Buddha which had fascinated him with its beautiful eyes. This time, he sees no peace in the eyes. He thinks: “If this Buddha were made today, he’d carry a gun in his hands” (Wagle 2008:191). Definitely, the creator of the Buddha would incorporate his present impression into his creation.

After losing Palpasa, he starts making new paintings named ‘Palpasa Series’. These paintings are “a reflection” of his journey and his sufferings, so he can’t “be objective” (Wagle 2008:212).

            After completing the paintings, he puts them in auction in his gallery. When his customers, a Japanese couple, ask him about his way of mixing colours, he replies that he does it “as the mood takes” him. He further says: “The language of colour depends on the eye of the viewer …colours depend on the way you see them” (Wagle 2008:221).

            Drishya admits a relationship between the hills, the seasons and the colours in the painting, and says that his painting carries the impression because he grew up with “the colours the flowers painted the hills” (Wagle 2008:225).

            Palpasa, a fan of Drishya’s paintings, has also many subjective impressions. Drishya’s works seem “romantic” and having “something new” every time (Wagle 2008:20) to her.

Palpasa is very much charmed by a particular painting named ‘Rain’, in which a long yellow leaf is falling. “The leaf falls and falls but never touches the ground”, Palpasa writes in a letter to Drishya, “I feel like that leaf” (Wagle 2008:28). The picture represents Palpasa’s unstable mood.

            Palpasa thinks that a viewer understands a painting or an art work according to his or her inner state of mind. The same painting might carry different meanings for other viewers. So, she writes to Drishya that the true depths of a painting “lie in the mind of the viewer” (Wagle 2008:21).

            Palpasa also says Drishya’s work has “left its mark” (Wagle 2008:24) on her. She tries to know Drishya through the pages of his book because she believes that “Words can be a mirror of the self” (Wagle 2008:25). 

References

Abrams, M.H. 2004. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Bangalore: Prism Books.

Pater, Walter. 1873. Studies in the History of the Renaissance. The VictorianWeb.5July.2007.14Aug.2008<http://.www.usp.nus.edu.sg/ Victorian/ authors/ pater/ index. Html>

Wagle, Narayan. 2008. Palpasa Café. Translator : Bikash Sangraula. Kathmandu: Nepalaya.

Note: Some parts of this article have been deliberately cut off due to the threat of plagiarism. This is a part of the research article published in CET Journal (Itahari).