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The Business Interview/Shombit Sengupta

'Today, when I seek the best colour in the world, I find it in my country'

Tell us about your life in India and France.

Before I left India for Paris, I was a college student, I didn't have a lot of money, I couldn't afford the colours. That is why all my paintings, everything was blackish. But when I reached France, when I could afford colours, then I thought I had been without colour for so long, I started using huge colours. That you have seen, colours by hand, in my paintings.

Now there is lot of colour in your personal life too? Your wardrobe for instance...

Yes, that is right. Most of the time I work in board meetings and that kind of thing. And people call me in to change their personal attitude, their corporate attitude. You know, in life, you should not spoil anything, you must make everything go ahead. If you like colours and if you can afford colourful shirts and colourful clothes, why not?

You said you went to Paris and discovered colour. But there is so much colour in India as well... in Rajasthan, your own Bengal.

That's the tragedy of my life. I thought before leaving India I was not getting colour, but today, when I seek the best colour in the world, I find it in my country. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that brings me to India all the time. Four or five years ago, I was travelling in India with one of my friends, a chairman of one of the big companies here. He told me, 'In India, you can't see poverty." I asked why? "Because if you find anybody on the streets, you'll see the women are always wearing nice beautiful saris.'

In Europe, as soon as somebody is poor, you can see from the dress. These are some of the lessons I got in India. But I could not utilise the colours when I was in India, perhaps my poverty didn't allow me to see the colours, the angle whatever, but you are quite right.

Are you saying that poverty prevents perception?

I think that could be, but you have to fight against it. In poverty, one thing I found that you are very much neat and clean. My mother always taught me that although we were poor, we have to by very neat and clean. Poverty doesn't mean dirt. Anyhow, my poverty boosted me to go to Paris and find colour. Also, you can say poverty can give you pressure, if you are really very hungry for colour, then one day you will get it. My mother always told me in my childhood that poverty was a big romanticism in our life.

You mean you romanticised poverty?

No, there is nothing romantic about poverty, but in our life it was very romantic. We felt poverty, but it was very romantic. This is one of the big lessons from my childhood. Where I was born, I had not seen proper electricity for 18 years, then I want to Paris, and there was a radical change in everything. It made me a big bridge between two cultures. That's why it makes me safe -- that in real terms it means nothing. I was only a human being. I have always tried to symbolise my human being ideas into colour.

A new culture, a new language, was it tough adapting in Paris?

It was very tough adapting, but I was really daring. I wanted to really get into it. I chose to go to a country where I could not speak the language, and in three or four years, I was a good speaker of French, besides writing it. I don't have any academic qualification in the French language. But after a short time, I could understand, and I loved it. Because my young life in Paris was good. The lithographic teacher was very nice, and sometimes I would transport some of the luggage from the atelier. One day I was carrying very heavy luggage to his car, and he gave me some money. I felt very embarrassed there and I refused. The next day, he gave me a gift of one of his lithos. I said thanks.

The time you left Bengal, that was also the time when a lot of idealism existed there. Were you part of it?

Yes, idealism was all over, and my mother was daring enough to drive me out of the country.

What I am saying is that the ideological mooring then was China, Russia. So wasn't your choice of Paris a little odd?

My head was very much toward China, but fortunately I was very much heart-oriented. I did not want to disclose all this, but I wanted badly to go to France.

So France was a very conscious decision on your part, it was not just one of those things....

No, France I really wanted to go to, for I had discovered that firstly, it was the country of paintings. And in my childhood, once I read in Bengali about Napoleon and how he came from Corsica to become the emperor of France. Not to be a real Frenchman and to become a French emperor!

And van Gogh. His earlier painting were dark, gloomy; then he went to France and within three years there was radical change: colours, everything changed. From rational Dutch painting, he jumped to the totally impressionist painting. All these things made me keen about France. I also used to read de Maupassant, I was very fascinated by some of his short stories.

From my childhood, I thought that Bengali culture and French culture are very related, and after 24 years, I find this is really true. I have made a lot of statements to this effect, in television interviews, I wrote in my book, I am very often invited to parties, philosophical soirees, with 20-25 people being invited to talk about the values, and the way I explain, between Bengali culture and France there is this big thing.

Surely in your work you must have experienced a lot of interesting episodes.

Well, this happened with the Bio yoghurt in France. At that time, digestion was a big problem and I found that everybody was on to a rational scientific equation. But this had created a kind of revulsion among consumers. All yoghurts symbols were white, and I thought it needed a radical change. The whole system of European consumption I think I changed this time. I talked about beauty in a food product which nobody had done before. And our real thought: if somebody can eat good, then the cosmetic health of making you beautiful will make it obvious.

There was no need to go for anything rational, and I went for something radically different. For Bio, I created a yellow star with a green colour. When I presented it, everybody was shocked. Even on the evening of the launch, they asked me to change it to blue, but I was really daring. I had decided that in the given situation, I might lose the client, but I said no. My team too wanted to change the colour, but I refused. Either you buy or you perish, no compromise, Then the emblem became a big thing. Till today, it looks like a modern emblem.

What about humour in your line of work?

Lots. I explained to a company, eat and shit, it comes at the same time. My client was afraid to talk about shitting, but if you understand the core product, why not? Even in the advertisement made, at the end, there is the sound of a flush tank. Shit and eat is the same. There is a lovely film by Bunuel, in which he shows the characters approaching the food table with commodes attached to them, eating and shitting....

When I started work in India, I told one management that your team, they go to a lot of gymkhanas; send them instead to rickshaw pullers, different people, not to gyms and sophisticated clubs, etc. I make lots of fun.

Would one be right in calling you the plastic surgeon for brands?

Actually, that is not good. Plastic surgeons remake, which means you have become ugly, and you want to make something better. But I am not that. If you say that I rejuvenate the heart, I will accept it. The heart was not beating perfectly well, you put something there and it is beating better now.

So a Christian Barnaard for brands?

If you want, yes.

Interviews