# Mumbiram

Mumbiram is an Indian painter and author known for his leadership of the Rasa Renaissance art movement. He is best known for his renderings, in charcoal and color media, of the folk people of India in real-life situations. Mumbiram is also known for his prema vivarta work of euphemisms, Deluges of Ecstasy, composed during his 12 years in the United States.

## Early life

Mumbiram was born in the busy Mandai vegetable market place of downtown Pune to lawyer and public figure Ramdas Paranjpe and mother, Anjani. She was the daughter of watercolor artist S. H. Godbole, who was secretary of the Bombay Art Society in the 1930s. Anjani was also the granddaughter of Shri Vartak, the first Indian Chief Engineer of the colonial Bombay Presidency. Mumbiram's father was a nephew of spiritual master Shri Ramdasanudas of Wardha, and of R. P. Paranjpye, the first Indian to top the Mathematical Tripos exam at Cambridge.
Mumbiram was a prodigious child artist and won prizes in children's art competitions. As a teenager he was attracted to math and science, and was later at the top of his class, having received his bachelor's degree in Telecommunication Engineering in 1967. Mumbiram attended the University of California, where he got his M.S. in Mathematical Systems in 1968, and a Ph.D. in 1973 for a dissertation in Mathematical Economics.

## Time in America

Mumbiram travelled much in America for six more years. The year he spent on Capitol Hill in Seattle, his year in Potomac, Maryland and his two years in Cambridge-Boston in Massachusetts are the most significant periods. He had developed a hands-on approach to painting. Charcoal and ink-and-brush were his forte. Much of his work of these years remains with unknown individuals.
The two works Alice Cooper Washing Mumbiram's Hair and Red-Haired Amateur Palmist Girl Reading Krishna's Fortune near Govardhan, seen below, are representative of his work in this period. His poetic work “Prema Vivarta” or “Deluges of Ecstasy” was composed during this period. In this work the "prema vivarta" mood is revealed as the art of reconciling the mundane and the transcendental on the path to self-realization. All five of these literary works make the ensemble “High Five of Love”. They are lavishly illustrated with Mumbiram's own masterpieces of Art that were independently made but were inspired by the same ideals. He soon returned to India.
* Rasa Renaissance Masterpiece "Forest Women visit Krishna and the Gopis" Oil on canvas, by Mumbiram, 1985

## Visit to Japan: The Gokula painting

Mumbiram's search for Classics of Sanskrit Literature brought him to Krishna's Vrindavan in the summer of 1987. There he met Sachiko Konno, a student from the Tokyo School of Design who was attracted to Vrindavan in search of an aesthetic ideal. Sachiko was now known by her spiritual name Gokula. Their friendship brought Mumbiram to Japan a few months later. Mumbiram made several oil paintings on canvas during his stay there for a few months. These soulful renderings show a sari-clad young Japanese woman, who is passionately in love with India. Gokula herself is said to have modeled for these and the setting is of Vrindavan in India even though they are made in Japan. These are important landmark paintings of confluence of two cultures.

## Literary flagships of Rasa Renaissance: High Five of Love, Mumbiram’s Rasa art juxtaposed with Rasa classics of literature (1995-2005)

Before that landmark house was torn down by developers in 2005, Mumbiram had completed another ambitious project that he had undertaken after his visit to Vrindavan in 1987. He has rendered four great Rasa Classics in graceful English and contemporary idiom. Vyasa’s "Rasa Panchadhyayi", Jayadeva’s "Gita Govinda" and Vishvanath Chakravarty’s "Prema Samput", appear as "Five Songs of Rasa", "Conjugal Fountainhead" and "Jewel-Box of Highest Secrets of True Love" respectively. A juicy folk version in Vraja Bhasha (dialect of Hindi spoken in the rural area where Krishna appeared 5000 years ago.) of Rupa Gosvami’s "LalitMadhava" is rendered as "Vrindavan Diaries". As English renderings of great eastern classics these are in the same league as Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Richard Francis Burton's "Arabian Nights" or Edwin Arnold’s "Light of Asia". The fifth is Mumbiram's original work "Deluges of Ecstasy" in the lofty Prema Vivarta mood of Love in Separation that he had composed in America. These are published as a five volume ensemble "High Five of Love" by Distant Drummer Publishing of Germany. As literary classics illustrated by the author himself they are reminiscent of works of William Blake and Khalil Gibran.

## Involvement with rag-pickers and tribals in the Prema Vivarta mood

According to Vaishnavism theology Krishna is Rasaraj, the Supreme source of all rasas and depictions of incidents in Krishna's biography are most attractive subjects for Rasa Art. In the ‘prema vivarta’ mood of attachment to Krishna, everything in the phenomenal world appears to the lover of Krishna as a déjà vu of something related to Krishna. Many Rasa masterpieces by Mumbiram are made in the prema vivarta mood. The theme of these renderings is from adolescent Krishna's celebrated activities yet it is enacted by forest tribals and urban rag-pickers. Ashok Gopal quotes Mumbiram: "My raven-dark rambunctious, roaming, rag-picking girlfriends remind me of Krishna and his boys in the forests of Vrindavan." The remote hills of India are inhabited by tribals that subsist on wild grains, fruit, berries, herbs, honey as well as fodder and firewood that is gathered from the forest. At the end of the day men and women come home with heavy loads much to the happiness of those waiting for them all day. The scriptures describe how eagerly the gopis, the cowherd damsels, used to wait for the adolescent Krishna and his friends to return from the forest with the cows.
The charcoal renderings: "Encounter on the Way back from the Forest" and "I let him persuade me" shown below are examples of this theme. Mumbiram thinks it is unfortunate that the civilized world of city people misses out on the very beautiful and touching human side of the lives of tribals that is close to nature. Their life is close to the life of adolescent Krishna that is considered to be the ultimate object of meditation by the revered scriptures of India. These renderings are examples of how enlightenment and aesthetic are intimately intertwined in the Rasa masterpieces of Mumbiram. Sudhir Sonalkar's article "Banishing tourist-type Visions" notices this unique aspect of Mumbiram's art.
* "I let him persuade me" by Mumbiram, Charcoal, 1986, Pune
* "Encounter on the Way back from the Forest", by Mumbiram, Charcoal, 1985, Pune