Art advisor Arvind Vijaymohan is fascinated by cinema, unconventional socks and old bikes.
I think everything for me has an orientation in art,” says Arvind Vijaymohan, who runs Japa Arts, an arts advisory. Growing up in a household where his parents were both artists, Vijaymohan was used to listening in on the esoteric conversations that his parents and their artistically inclined friends often had. “By the age of three, I remember the technical aspects of films being discussed at home,” he says.
That childhood link to cinema continues to date for Vijaymohan, who has over 1,200 films at home and says he has to watch a film a day. “I lean toward foreign language films and I can watch them over and over again.” But when he was still young, that luxury was missing. “My father,” Vijaymohan recounts, “would take us to Chanakya cinema for a bubblegum movie every week.” The more intellectually evolved and engaging cinema was watched once a fortnight, when a VCR player was hired and a movie rented. “That,” says Vijaymohan now, “was the cinema that was dissected.”
What started as a childhood household activity has stayed with Vijaymohan, because he continues to be fascinated with the idea that “a story can be compressed into two hours of visual delight”.
Cinema and socks may have nothing in common — but for Vijaymohan these two interests do have a common thread. He offers the example of a humble tea set, saying that “If you take an inanimate object like a tea set and redesign it, it speaks differently.” Then he adds, “Socks are normally staid, and I am naturally against anything that is staid.”
Vijaymohan, at last count, has as many as two cupboardsful of socks, and he traces that journey from his college days. “It all started with me wanting to get something unique. I couldn’t afford a Savile Row suit, but I could afford a pair of nice socks,” he recalls.
Colours, designs and concepts are all explored in his sock collection. There is another reason, he says, that may have propelled him into buying socks wherever he went: “The shock value of the unexpected is what attracted me to colourful socks. The same is true in art. I am attracted by the unexpected.” People also, he says, expected him, given his art background, to wear quirky stuff. Back then, when he was starting out, he was more than happy to conform to the stereotype. But now Vijaymohan is going through a no-socks phase.
That hasn’t stopped Vijaymohan from being possessive of his sock collection. He has lost count of how many pairs he has but is pretty sure that his wife often gives them away to charity. Next on Vijaymohan’s list of collectibles is going to be umbrellas. Vijaymohan’s long-suffering wife, he feels sure, has the “there he goes again” expression on her face. Undeterred, Vijaymohan says cheerfully, “I only have six at the moment and I pick them up from different countries I travel to.” By next year, he promises, the number of umbrellas will rise.
At the other end of the design spectrum that holds Vijaymohan’s interest are motorbikes. From the first bike that he bought (for those keen to know, it was a Hero Honda), Vijaymohan has been hooked to the mechanics of the vehicle. This interest finds expression through his habit of restoring old bikes. Vijaymohan’s first restoration job was a Yamaha RD350. He says, “The idea of setting up a machine from scratch fascinates me.”
There is an active network of people into restoration of vintage bikes and cars. They help him locate genuine and rare parts. And then, of course, there’s the Internet, “How the world functioned without Google is beyond me,” he says jokingly. Although replica kits of old bikes are available easily, according to him, there is no thrill in that. “I like building it completely by myself,” he says. Depending on how easily he gets the original parts, the restoration of a bike could take anywhere between a few months and three or four years.
It was four years ago when he restored his first RD350. Then he moved on to his second bike, of the same make. He has also set his sights on a 1950 BSA Golden Flash which he plans to begin work on pretty soon.
Vijaymohan’s work takes him out of the country for almost 10 days a month. So where does he find time for his hobbies? “I always say that you have to keep working in the gaps if you want to sustain any hobby or passion.” That’s why his Sundays are mostly spent working on the bikes. He loves taking them out for a ride and tries to do that every week. He admits to a fascination for old cars, too, and one particular Willy’s jeep did intrigue him. “But working on cars at this point of time is beyond me,” he says. The old jeep was available for Rs 60,000 but an original chassis is worth a few lakhs, so he dropped the idea. Though knowing about his fetish for collecting things, it won’t be a surprise if he ends up restoring vintage cars as well...
