Dec 21, 1998
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THRISSUR Pretty Pest To most it's parasitical plant. To this man, it's an exquisite piece of art. By Uday Mahurkar
Not Edmund Peters. A retired English professor, the 57-year-old grows guavas in Thrissur, Kerala, and actually believes otherwise. He detects the "cancerous" growth in time and transforms it into exquisite pieces of art. Flamingoes, cranes, elephants, long-legged deer, ballet dancers, mothers with their newborns ... he has put together over 700 pieces that could be the envy of any curio collector. "Aesthetically they are superb, so rich," says art critic Esther David. "Come to think of it, they have been created out of waste, out of emptiness." How does Peters manage that? To begin with, he picks up a piece of the "waste" and visualises shapes and forms of birds, animals or human beings. The various configurations, twists and turns of the twigs and foliage leave ample room for imagination. "It's a job that needs a lot of concentration," admits Peters. "When I am unable to concentrate and visualise forms, it becomes an unending riddle." Once he has something in mind, he sits down with a small cutter, a pen knife and a chisel and cuts the loranthus accordingly. The surface is then smoothened with sandpaper, polished and a wooden platform fitted beneath. "The end-result is so fulfilling," continues the professor, "it has given new meaning to my life." It all began one summer afternoon in 1990 when a lump of loranthus lying in the orchard of his decades-old ancestral house drew Peters' attention. As he kept looking at it, he began to see a Russian ballerina in it. Picking up the piece of loranthus, he tried to give shape to his thoughts. It not only worked, it looked breathtaking. What began as a hobby soon became an obsession. Now Peters hires professional tree climbers and gets the loranthus down from tree tops. That's not an easy task. While extricating the loranthus, one must be careful not to break the foliage. So instead of throwing the mass down from the top, the climbers ties it a rope and slides it down. Each mass inspires Peters differently. At times he looks at it for a few minutes, at times months, before he decides what he can do with it. For instance, Christ's Crucifixion, one of his master pieces, was the result of a three-month exercise and is displayed prominently in the altar of his house that is dotted with curios made of loranthus. For all his accomplishments, the artist in Peters, who taught English in St Thomas College -- which boasts of such alumni as E.M.S. Nampoodiripad and C. Achuta Menon -- is remarkably modest. "How can I brag about it?" he asks. "What I do is just add value to a thing which is already there." But the comments that viewers leave in the visitors' books after seeing his exhibitions have their own story to tell. "A retired professor of English demonstrates that poetry can be written even without words," reads one comment. "Now we will look at our kids with an Edmund look," goes another. A true hobbyist, Peters had long resisted the temptation of making money out of his work. But persuaded by his sons, he sold a few pieces at a recent exhibition in Bangalore. The sale fetched him Rs 10,000 almost instantly. It was an eyeopener. Loranthus is a menace in the state and the Kerala Government presses a full-fledged squad into service each year to fight it. Making pieces of art and selling them was a productive way of tackling the waste. As one of Peters' exhibition brochures point out, "All nature is but art unknown to thee." With or without the commercial angle. |
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Loranthus. Visit any mango or guava orchard down
south and you'll find out what the dreaded word means. Growing on the top of the fruit
trees, this parasitical plant escapes detection during the initial stages. By the time it
is spotted, it has sunk its roots deep. It sucks the life-giving nutrients from the trees,
often killing them, if not lowering their yield. Ask any orchard owner and he'll tell you,
"It's anathema." 
